Renovation on MC Little Theater provides more room for events

by Emily Toy
and Tammy Walquist
Scroll Staff

Rodney Gardner of Sugar City fills in a doorway gap with putty. Crews have been remodeling the MC Little Theater since Dec. 10. Administrators are aiming to make all rooms on campus functional 80 percent of the time. The renovations will make this possible in the Little Theater. James Ricks / Scroll

The reason for the change revolves around a university goal to make the rooms on campus functional 80 percent of the time, Rulon Nielson, Physical Plant architect and head of the MC Little Theater project, said.

The MC Little Theater is the largest of the rooms that do not fill this requirement.

“Right now, [the theater] is pretty much a single-use room,” Randy Parkinson, assistant director of the Hyrum Manwaring Student Center, said. “We wanted to make it more of a multi-purpose room so it can be used for banquets as well as meetings.”

The room will be similar to the MC West Ballroom, Ric Page, director of the MC and assistant director of student life, said.

“Now we can match seating to events, not events to seating,” Page said.

Of course, with the renovations, some things were surrendered.

The project included removing the theater-style permanent seats, leveling and carpeting the floor and adding a wheelchair ramp to the stage.

“We will give up a few things: the soft, padded theater seats for movies,” Page said. “[However], we gain so much more in terms of useability and versatility of space.”

One huge improvement, Nielson said, is the wheelchair ramp. For the first time, the stage will be wheelchair accessible, which is important for church meetings.

In the process of leveling the floor, tiles containing asbestos were removed, Page said.

Asbestos is the name applied to a group of six different fibrous materials that occur naturally in the environment, according to www.atsdr.cdc.gov.

Since asbestos fibers may produce adverse health effects, they have been taken out of use.

The asbestos in the theater was something that project planners were aware of when they began the project, Page said.

“The asbestos was non-friable, which means it doesn’t become airborne in any way unless it is disturbed in an unusual way, such as a drill or saw,” Page said. “Because we were going to disturb the floor as part of the project, [the floor] had to be removed.

“While [the asbestos] had been contained in the floor, it wasn’t a problem — it wears long and hard,” Page said. “[We] could no longer contain it because we had to move the floor as part of the project.”

The project had been in the planning stages for several months, Parkinson said.

The project was funded by BYU-Idaho monetary means, Page said.

“Part of the money came through general campus funds we use for projects such as this,” Page said. “The rest came from Capital Needs Analysis funds, which is money [we] use for replacing items that wear out.”

When more money becomes available, Nielson said, there are plans to replace the curtains on the stage and paint the room.

The room is scheduled to be ready for Sacrament Meeting use Jan. 13.

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