With more Americans being vaccinated, the weather getting warmer, and COVID restrictions slowly being lifted, this spring is looking more and more hopeful. Within our community, one of the most exciting things this spring will be the long-awaited opening of BGA’s new Center for Arts and Entrepreneurship. While we may have seen progress on the exterior of the building, the interior of the building has been highly secretive, with few being allowed inside during construction other than the builders and the BGA administration. However, I managed to secure an exclusive tour of the building with Mr. Gregg and Ms. Self in order to write this article, and I’m here to give you a low-down of the new building.
Y’all. It’s insane. I’ll be honest, I am famously sarcastic and have low expectations for pretty much everything, but I was seriously blown away by the interior of the building. While construction is still active, most of the interior is complete, and you can easily imagine the finished building. While I wanted to give you all an inside look, I was not allowed to take pictures inside the building in order to keep the interior under wraps until its grand opening in early April. The only picture I have is a selfie of me in my hard hat, which I don’t think anyone needs to see.
When you first enter the building, you arrive in a walkway which is flooded by natural light (the entire building is filled with natural light –and if you watch as much HGTV as I do, you know that’s a good thing). When you look up, you immediately see a massive lit emblem of the BGA logo, which you can actually currently see from the Cherry Circle at night. As you enter the lobby, there is a massive window looking down from the top floor, and two sets of stairs that immediately lead you to the top floor. The front desk, while not installed yet, will reside in the center of the lobby, as well as a screen that will display messages and media. On the first floor, there are three EL breakout rooms, one with a high-tech recording studio, which can be used to film and record musical performances and presentations. The first floor also contains two classrooms, a fully-functional catering kitchen for events, a green room for guest lecturers and presenters to sit in before their performances, and doors that lead into the theatre (more on that later!).
After traveling up the stairs, we arrived at the second floor. Despite having a bridge-like walkway where you can look down on the first floor, it mostly mirrored the first floor. There are classrooms, including one with multiple monitors; two EL breakout rooms; a lobby space with monitors and room for presentations to groups of about 60 people; and two offices in the back hallway. At this point, Mr. Gregg invited me to go through the door to the balcony of the new theatre. One word: wow. In fact, when I walked in, I literally said, “Wow.” According to Mr. Gregg, I was keeping with the multiple person streak of that being the first word of visitors upon entrance to the theatre. The theatre is massive. In fact, our new 550-seat theatre will be the largest theatre in Franklin, larger than the theatres at The Factory at Franklin and Academy Park. Our new theatre, with its stunning architecture and high tech equipment will be a major step up from the Harlin. We then traveled up to the tech booth, which will be used to house our stage managers and lighting managers during performances, and a small balcony which can be used for audio monitoring. Once we got down to the stage, I discovered that it was somehow bigger than it looked from the balcony. Quick shoutout to the designers of the seating: I absolutely love that there is handicapped accessible seating on both sides of the theatre, and I’m sure that I’m not alone in that. The area above the stage is about 2 ½ stories tall and utilizes technology that allows for set pieces to be stored above the stage during performances and brought down when needed. There’s also a catwalk above the stage for crewmembers to work on rigging and lighting. Just offstage is a brand new dressing room for cast members of our plays and musicals, with new mirrors (fun fact – it used to be the speech room!). Behind the stage, there is a two story storage area with a loft for set pieces and a brand new makerspace for the makerspace class and theatre arts which will have 3D printers!
At this point, the tour ended, and I sadly had to leave the building (and take off my hard hat). As I walked back from the tour, I reflected on how lucky we are to have something so exciting happening on campus. Though this may have been a really hard year, I think we can all agree that seeing progress on the new building has brought us hope and excitement when we needed it most. While I couldn’t give pictures or video, I hope that this sneak preview has made you a little bit more excited for the newest edition to campus, and I’m sure you’ll be blown away once you see what’s really inside.
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