Dramatic Transformation
Roe Green Center stages progress for theatre, dance education at Kent State

By Mark Watt

This fall, Kent State University is celebrating its 100th anniversary with the completion of several significant construction projects intended to prepare the university for another century of success. A key component of that effort is the new Roe Green Center for the School of Theatre and Dance, which updates the university’s existing Music & Speech Building – situated along Route 59 on the northeast corner of campus – with 73,500 square feet of renovated studio space and additions.

Designed by New York City-based architectural firm Holzman Moss Bottino Architecture with Hammond Construction acting as construction manager, Roe Green Center houses a new 200-seat black box experimental theatre, a trio of new dance studios and a new lobby entrance for the Music & Speech Building as well as state-of-the-art classrooms, workshops and offices, a new media library, a costume shop, performance support spaces, a welding lab and a lighting lab.

The project is the result of an endeavor initiated after Kent State alumnus Roe Green, an arts patron, community activist and philanthropist, toured the facility in 2005, according to Michael Bruder, director of design and construction at Kent State’s Office of the University Architect. Green came from the tour realizing the shortcomings in the facility’s offerings for students, so she challenged the department “to come up with a plan of what it would take to make the School of Theatre and Dance everything that it could be,” Bruder says. That’s what the university did and in response, the Roe Green Foundation provided $6.5 million for the project, the largest single capitol gift in Kent State’s history. Matching funds from the university provided a total of $13 million for the entire project, including construction and soft costs alike.

According to Thomas McMahon, project manager with Hammond Construction, groundbreaking for the project took place in 2008, with work phased into three separate bid packages including foundations and sitework; structural steel construction; and then the balance of construction trades. Presenting a challenge for the project team, the Music & Speech Building needed to be fully operational throughout the entire process, which lasted two academic years. That required complex scheduling, McMahon says, particularly since a quiet atmosphere is essential for so many activities within the building – like theater rehearsals, music classes and TV broadcasting.

“Space was also an issue,” McMahon says. “It was a chess game where you’d move somebody out of one space, renovate it and then move them back in.”

Two years later, Roe Green Center is ready to officially open for the fall semester with new, state-of-the-art educational resources and performance capabilities for Kent State students.

To read the rest of this article, download the August 2010 issue of Properties Magazine now. [August 2010; download PDF; 11.7 mb]