We are done! (for the moment)

After nine long months, our latest round of renovations has come to a close. We have a finished lobby, a dedicated art gallery, new offices for the Northampton Center for the Arts and A.P.E. as well as a fully kitted out concessions area. On the lower level Workroom infrastructure is nearly complete, with new storage space, a green room and dressing rooms, along with a catering support area. Take a look at the video below and follow the steps required to get us to where we are today.

We've gone dark!

After roughly five months of allowing our tenants public use of the building on weekends and afternoons/evenings, we now enter a phase of renovations that requires us to close the building to the public through the end of November. This time allows for extensive work in the lobby and gallery areas, and the completion of much of the infrastructure for the Workroom. The lobby will see a concessions area built out, touches to a box office, new flooring and new office space. The art gallery space will be finished and painted. Walls in the Workroom will be painted, a new sprung floor laid down, catwalks erected and finishing touches put to a green room, catering support area, dressing rooms and much needed storage space for our building partners. 33 Hawley will be back in business in late November/early December and all our building partners look forward to inviting the public in to enjoy performances, classes, exhibitions and more. See ya then.

Behind the scenes

Demolition, concrete, steel, lumber, doors, hardware, paint, HVAC (piping, ducts, VFR splits and equipment, dehumidifiers, RGDs [what?]), wiring, lights, camera, action! There’s a lot going on behind the work-a-day scenes to support the creation of a space that will host theatrical scenes and more. We’ve made considerable progress over the past few months, including finishing touches to the courtyard, build-out of gallery and office spaces, piping and wiring for the WorkRoom. Here are few snaps of progress thus far…

Steppin’ out, sitting down

A new set of garapa benches (not to be confused with the brandy grappa) provides a spot to take a break from dancing during the Center for the arts 33 Outside celebrations.

A moveable stage for DJs, tiny dancers and whatever other performers might show up.

Shhhh!

Not an alien landscape but a close-up of one of the many acoustical panels installed in the WorkRoom to provide the enormous space with the best sound.

Acoustical panels along the walls of the WorkRoom, plus blocking for a ladder that will lead up to catwalks supporting light and sound systems.

Behind the scenes behind the walls

The Arts Trust has humbly (shout out to Jayson Tatum and Celtics fans!) created beautiful spaces within 33 Hawley Street, but much of the real work is unseen, snaking behind walls, creeping above ceilings, giving the building life and breath.

Walls

It’s kind of easy to take walls for granted. You walk into a room and they are just sort of there — maybe they have some outrageous look-at-me accent paint or maybe some I’m-just-plain-vanilla paint here or maybe some fabulous art and, well, the wall’s just there in service to the art, to the paint, to the room. It’s just a wall, right? So, right now, you could say we are in a ho-hum phase of renovations, framing out walls in the lower level, running electric and A/V cable to junction boxes, getting the rock wool and wallboard and tape and mud onsite — not too sexy but definitely necessary.

Slightly jazzier — we are in the midst of installing benches in the courtyard. If you ever wondered what those chained off concrete steps were, well, you’ll soon know.

Grounded

For eleven days before the Arts Trust closed down the Workspace for renovations, building partner A.P.E. invited the public in for “Making Ground,” an event that turned the Workspace floor into a canvas “upon which ​artists and the wider community are invited to create, reflect, and imagine together.” The full program of ”Making Ground” extended well beyond chalk marks on a floor to encompass community investigations into themes of “home, land, ancestry, colonization, assimilation, belonging, and possibility.” The scribbles, drawings, texts and tones left behind transformed the floor into an intriguing bit of ephemeral community art. In due time, the surface will be covered by a new sprung floor for the Workroom.

At it again

Starting this month (March), we begin a new round of renovations to 33 Hawley Street. As in the past, we plan the coming renovations with our building partners and their users in mind. Ergo, we are proceeding with work in two phases. Phase 1 will last from March through August, during which time the Flex, Eli’s Room and Carole’s Studio will be available during late afternoons and evenings, and on weekends. The Northampton Center for the Arts, A.P.E and the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought will program during those times, while Northampton Open Media will establish itself for the duration of renovations at its offices at Northampton High School. From September through the end of November, the entire building will be closed.

Areas under renovation include the lobby, Workroom and storage areas on the lower level.

During the full closure of the building be sure to check our building partners websites to see what they are up to:

Northampton Center for the Arts — nohoarts.org
A.P.E — apearts.org
Northampton Open Media — northamptonopenmedia.org
School for Contemporary Arts and Thought — scdtnoho.com

Check back here for updates on where we are in the renovations and any special news from 33 Hawley’s art partners.