Plans for Pantages Theatre renovations unveiled

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra is finding a new home.

The news was announced at a Tuesday press conference in the atrium of the historic Pantages Theatre, where the WSO will present much of its annual 70-some concert program in the not-so-distant future.

Since 1968, the WSO has rented rehearsal, box office and performance space at Centennial Concert Hall next door and intends to continue presenting its larger concerts at the iconic late modernist venue.

“On (Pantages’) opening night in 1914, it featured juggling acts, comedians, musicians and women who danced in a cage with a pair of lions,” said Brent Bellamy of Number TEN Architectural Group, which is leading Pantages’ projected $50- to $60-million renovation with the WSO and the Performing Arts Consortium (PAC), Pantages’ owners.

“A month later, incidentally, the lions ate her husband.”

The former vaudeville theatre echoes with a century of myths and performance memories, from the slapstick antics of the Three Stooges and Buster Keaton to concerts by Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald and modern rock bands. According to legend, Pantages was where Charlie Chaplin’s last live show unfolded before he transitioned to film — Winnipeg’s winter cold having driven him away from touring life.

“It seems that just about everybody has a story about this building,” WSO executive director Angela Birdsell said at the press conference.

“Together with the WSO and with the community, we have the potential to fill the space once again, on hundreds of days and evenings of the year, bringing more people back downtown and enriching lives.”

The WSO had managed Pantages from 2011 as a rental venue for performance and community organizations until it was shuttered in 2018. More than 75 organizations used the venue across 150 days in its last year of operations.

“The wear and tear, interestingly enough, on a building is more evident when it’s closed than when it’s open and functioning. Your mechanical systems, electrical systems, HVAC systems, etcetera, tend to deteriorate in a very observable way when you’re closed, and that is clearly the case here,” said Curt Vossen, a director of PAC and the chairman of the WSO.

Pantages’ costing exercise — which includes a bigger stage, an orchestra pit, stage rigging and modernized electrical and mechanical systems — was undertaken by Bockstael Construction in January 2024; the WSO hopes to move into the 1,100-seat modernized Pantages by 2029.

So far, PAC and WSO have raised $15 million in support pledges and plan to launch a major capital campaign once they’ve secured $25 to $30 million.

They expect their budget will be covered 50-50 between the public and private sector, including support from all three levels of government.

Birdsell says at this point they’ve secured federal support for upgrading Pantages’ elevator and a $12-million Green and Inclusive Community Building grant, close to $1 million in capital from the city and a smaller amount from the province.

“I think it’s fair to say that in this province the investment in the culture sector has been static for a number of decades, and we know that other jurisdictions in Western Canada are heavily investing in the arts, so it is time for a major investment in culture and in the downtown, particularly,” says Birdsell.

Birdsell’s hope for renewed support from the Manitoba government is backdropped by a history of perceived neglect. In 2019, Trudy Schroeder, then WSO’s executive director, criticized the province for sidestepping necessary repairs to the Centennial Concert Hall’s acoustic shell — which, when it’s working correctly, shapes an orchestra’s sound and projects it towards the audience.

While the government did commit $15 million to other building upgrades, including replacing the roof and restoring the stone cladding on the facade, the orchestra is still performing with a temporary electronic shell.

Birdsell says the move to Pantages, where they plan to enter a long-term agreement as managing tenant, is about more than acoustics.

“In effect, we are (currently) subsidizing the organizations that get their space free of charge from the MCCC,” says Birdsell, referring to the Manitoba Centennial Centre Corporation, a Crown corporation that manages the art district that includes the concert hall, Manitoba Museum and Planetarium, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre and Artspace Inc.

“We love them. I totally understand that all organizations have their challenges, but this is the most profoundly inequitable arrangement relative to our peers. We can’t sell a single beer. If we want to program a noon-hour concert somewhere, we can’t do it.”

Birdsell also highlights that the WSO would be the last major orchestra in Canada to move out of its “Centennial-era hall,” the large, multi-purpose venues many cities across the country built for Canada’s Centennial in 1967.

At 2,300 seats, the concert hall is Canada’s largest orchestra venue in one of its smallest capital cities; a purpose-built facility such as the renovated Pantages Theatre is better calibrated to the WSO’s needs and audiences.

“We can do large and small, and I think probably more innovative concerts with a wider range of music from different cultures. If it’s not costing us $15,000 a night, we have flexibility and can take more risk (artistically),” she says.

Birdsell says that in an expanded version of their pre-2018 managerial role with Pantages, the WSO would facilitate the building’s operations for community usage — with space for summer programs, events such as Culture Days, and ancillary revenue-generating activities such as rentals, food and beverage and training.

“This would be great for the WSO, but also be great for the community,” says Birdsell. “You don’t have to love the orchestra to love Pantages … everybody seems to have a connection to this building.”

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca