MAKING PROGRESS — Scott Dressel, lead volunteer for the Grand Theater Restoration Project, is surrounded by scaffolding inside the 101-year-old facility. -- Linda Harris

STEUBENVILLE — By the first of the year, Scott Dressel, lead volunteer for the Grand Theater Restoration Project, is hoping to have a couple of “smaller events” lined up for the facility–but that doesn’t mean its renovation, which began 15 years ago, will be finished.

Far from it.

Dressel said the current tear-down-and-rebuild stage at the structure on South Fourth Street should be complete by the end of the year, but there will still be plenty to do — including installation of fire suppression throughout the entire structure, an elevator, bathrooms and the HVAC. There also is the office space; catering kitchens; refinishing the ballroom and the fly loft area above the stage, which needs a whole new steel deck; new steel stairs and a fly lift mechanism to raise and lower curtains and backdrops; plus lighting, sound, projection and a screen.

But the actual demolition — among other things, identifying what is salvageable and bringing in experts to make models so they can recreate ornamental plaster and other original elements that are beyond repair and then put them back where they belong; replastering; and fitting some HVAC and pipes into places they won’t be able to access later — should all be in the rear-view mirror by the end of the year.

“I think we’re still shooting for December, but it’s possible it can be sooner,” Dressel said. “Obviously, we could use some revenue to pay for just the utilities and our insurance, you know, which have gotten expensive. This year it was really a lot, because we have to insure for the contractors being here as well. So, it’s just way more expensive. It would be nice to start doing some things here.”

The theater, now 101 years old, was in a state of disrepair when the renovations began in 2010. Back then, he said, “It looked like the Titanic.” He said the Grand is well on its way to “looking just like it did when it was brand new in 1924, but better … and certainly more stable.”

“During the last 15 years we’ve gone from soaking wet and falling apart to now, when the auditorium at the end of this phase will be mostly finished as far as the plaster work goes,” he said. “It’s a big leap forward and we still have a long way to go, but it’s going to look amazing when this phase is finished.”

To date, Dressel said they’ve spent $3 million bringing the theater back to life, including $500,000 from the National Park Service Save America’s Treasures program and $1.5 million from the Appalachian Regional Commission POWERS grant that the project received, as well as a $300,000 Capital Bill grant through the state of Ohio that’s “mostly being spent to build an emergency exit tower … that’ll include both levels of the ballroom and also the lower level, so people can get out through this alley.”

“We’re doing that tower now,” he said. “(But) we also have to do a tower on the other side, and we have to add a building for our dressing rooms because they have to be at stage level. We’re going to tear off that little addition on the back of the next building, drop it down (three of four) feet, and then we’re going to put a one- or two-story addition there that’ll have dressing rooms for the performers and maybe some more storage. So, this stuff that is left is not (overly) complicated — it’s just expensive.”

He said work on a new walkway so users can exit through the alley, plus new doors, will start after AEP finishes relocating some of the electrical services.

What the volunteers need more of now, he said, is of course money — possibly as much as $5 million.

“We still have a long way to go, and things have gotten way more expensive than they were when we started in 2010,” he said. “A lot depends on what kind of grants we get and when we get them, and what it costs to use that grant money because some grant money has different labor rate requirements than others, so the rate of pay is significantly higher than average. So, we’ll see.”

And as sweet as it is to see the theater coming to life, Dressel admits it hasn’t always been easy.

“I’ve been doing restorations for a long time, but it was very difficult to watch this demolition,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Gee, I’ve been protecting that for so long’ and then just … smash. …You have to make more of a mess to get better — that’s true about all restoration.”