The college’s Board of Directors approved the tentative plans and specifications for the Performing Arts Center Project during a special meeting on Tuesday evening. This allows the project to go out for bids from contractors. The contracts to do the work will be awarded at a later date.

This will be the first time since it was built in 1978 that the 1,200-seat Decker Auditorium will undergo any significant upgrades.

“The ultimate goal is not to just update Decker Auditorium,” said college President Jesse Ulrich. “The goal of this is to truly create a better student experience within the fine arts by creating a Center for Performing Arts that culminates in a lot of different areas and updates that hall into a new age.”

There is a laundry list of problems the current facility has, including lack of handicap accessibility backstage, as well as a leaky roof and inadequate space for dressing rooms and set building, said Teresa Jackson, director of theater at Iowa Central.

-Photo courtesy of Paul DeCoursey
Iowa Central's Decker Auditorium will soon undergo a major overhaul and update. The project will provide upgrades to the existing facility, as well as add to it the Performing Arts Center.

“It’s time,” Jackson said. “She’s been a grand old dame, but she needs to go retire a beautiful facility.”

In the auditorium itself — which will be renamed Decker Hall — new stage lighting and sound equipment will be part of the upgrade.

“The lights are antiquated and the rigging system needs to be overhauled to make it current,” Jackson said. “We can’t even replace some of the lights we have because they don’t make them anymore.”

The project will add space on the south side of the building, making room for a new theater classroom, new band and general music classrooms and expanded backstage areas.

“We will be putting in new makeup and changing rooms for our students,” Ulrich said. “We’ll be adding a scene shop area.”

Building a dedicated shop area to build stage sets will also open the stage up for more community groups to use, Ulrich said. Currently, most of the set pieces for Iowa Central productions are built right on the stage, so the college isn’t able to offer the use of the stage to outside groups very often.

“When I’ve got a cast of 50 women sharing this really tiny room, it’s just challenging,” Jackson said of the current state of the backstage dressing rooms.

Another major update to the facility will be the addition of restrooms on both the first and second floors. Currently, visitors must go next door to Hodges Fieldhouse to use the restroom.

An entrance on the south side of the building will be built to be closer to additional parking.

“It’s not just the aesthetics of the auditorium itself, but all of the nitty gritty of putting on a production that will be improved,” Jackson said. “It’s just antiquated. I think my team has done such a good job of hiding all of our flaws, because we have talented students and we work really hard. We’re a really cohesive performance team, but it gets harder and harder.”

The state of the facility has also caused some problems with recruiting to the fine arts programs at the college, Jackson said. A lot of students are coming in from high schools that have newly-renovated performance auditoriums and are seeing the poor shape of the aging Decker Auditorium.

Jackson said she thinks that the upgrades to Decker Hall and addition of the Performing Arts Center will also help bring in professional touring groups to perform shows throughout the year.

The cost of the project won’t be known until the contract is awarded in July, Ulrich said. About $3 million left from the 2018 bond referendum approved by voters in the region is earmarked for the project, with the rest of the cost coming from “mixed funding” sources.

A public hearing for the performing arts center project is scheduled for 5 p.m. on Tuesday, July 12. The construction contract is expected to be awarded that night as well.

“It’s going to be a neat project,” board chairman Mark Crimmins said.

When construction begins, the project is expected to take about 18 months, Ulrich said. During construction, there will not be any theater or musical performances on the Decker Auditorium stage. Though there likely won’t be any large productions, Ulrich said the college does plan to use existing space elsewhere on campus and in the community to be able to hold smaller performances while Decker Auditorium is closed.