Author: Mike Bailey
With each passing week, Kim Blickenstaff’s Scottish Rite Theatre gets that much closer to completion. With a bit of cooperation from COVID and from the vaccine meant to defeat it, the historic, architecturally compelling building gets that much closer to opening.
The Scotty hosted a media availability this week to provide both an update on the renovation’s progress and to show off the state-of-the-art staging, sound, and lighting systems, the installation of the new stage curtain, new carpeting, restored stain glass windows, handicap-accessibility features, and too many other improvements to mention. You can get a glimpse here.
“We’re really close,” said Steve Wojda, project manager for Upstaging Inc. out of Sycamore, Illinois, which counts Chicago’s United Center among its many clients.
“Automation-wise, this is really an amazing facility,” Wojda said while leading a tour of the technology behind the scenes. Wojda grew up in the Peoria area – a former resident of Mapleton, he’s a 1990 graduate of Illini Bluffs High School – and remembers his mom taking him to watch a production of “A Christmas Carol” at the then-Scottish Rite Cathedral in the 1980s.
“I remember we sat up in the balcony, and seeing the lights and thinking, ‘This is what I want to do,’” he said.
He got the bug even more emphatically while interning at Corn Stock Theatre in Peoria, where he ran across Jenny Parkhurst, now the performing arts director at Blickenstaff’s KDB Group. That encounter led to Parkhurst hiring Wojda’s company years later to help bring the 96-year-old Scottish Rite back to its original glory – and then some.
It has been a challenging assignment, bringing an early 20th-century building into the 21st while negotiating some very tight, even forgotten spaces where nothing but dust had settled for decades.
Still, particularly with COVID shutting everything else down in 2020, “this has been a really fun project,” he said.
What’s next?
So much of the reinvestment has gone to the areas people don’t see, like a new HVAC system that will introduce The Scotty to air conditioning for the first time.
“Our (Steinway) piano needs to come home,” said Parkhurst. With much of the heavy lifting on renovation now behind the facility, there will be more cleaning and further aesthetic touch-ups. In terms of what patrons see and appreciate, “it’s all about bathrooms and bars” from here on out, said Parkhurst.
To that end, a large bar has been commissioned that will incorporate freemason symbology and fit right in. The ancient organs are to be removed, restored elsewhere, and reinstalled, which is a big job.
As to when the Scottish Right theatre and banquet center will fully open, well, so much of that is unpredictable due to the pandemic, dependent on the rollout of the COVID vaccine. That said, there is high confidence that it will happen yet this year. There is no end of details to address between now and then, though Parkhurst promises a Livestreaming component at The Scotty “that will set us apart.
“So even if we’re restricted by COVID, we can have a partial live audience and also sell virtual tickets.”
Between up-and-coming live acts and veteran performers with established audiences, Parkhurst is convinced that there is a real niche in downstate Illinois for a place like the Scotty, where the theatre capacity will be about 800, give or take.
A virtual concert over the holidays so bathed The Scotty in light, along with those uncanny acoustics, that it provided a real hint of the magic to come.
“Kim has opened his mind to make this building as beautiful as it can be,” said Parkhurst. “With the pandemic soon to be behind us, it’s just an exciting time for this building.”