‘Cultural icon’ gets facelift

The INB Performing Arts Center is open for business after the latest in a series of spruce-ups.

Crews were tidying up almost to the moment that the media arrived for the unveiling of $2.7 million in updates that further solidified the 30-plus-year-old former opera house as a contemporary events facility. Although some elevator and landscaping work remains to be completed, the facility is ready to host the season opener for the Spokane Symphony in style.

“It’s fantastic. I think this is the cultural icon of our region and we needed to revitalize it,” said Randy Fewel, president and CEO of Inland Northwest Bank. The center is named after the bank, which is contributing $1.5 million over a 10-year period to help with the work.

“It’s so updated. It’s just cool,” Fewel said.

Improvements include the addition of new carpeting and paint, along with updated lobby furniture and extensive re-landscaping that creates small seating areas where patrons can sneak away for a cigarette or cigar without violating state law.

Since the Public Facilities District took over operations of the former opera house from the city in 2003, the aging building has received $5.4 million in updates. Past projects created new seating, state-of-the-art acoustics and lighting and modern restrooms with additional stalls so female patrons don’t have to wait in long lines.

Madsen Mitchell Evenson & Conrad PLLC of Spokane did the interior design work and Schimmels Construction was the contractor.

Johnna Boxley, general manager for the performing arts center, said that since the facility opened, it has hosted more than 8.5 million guests.

Kevin Twohig, executive director of the PFD, said the center has a full schedule of concerts and events lined up and will host even more after the Spokane Symphony moves many of its concerts into the Fox Theater, sometime in November, after its renovations are complete. After the move, the symphony will use the performing arts center for Holiday Pops and other special concerts.

With the front-end remodel complete, Twohig said the PFD hopes to get started on a master plan for renovating the backstage areas and dressing rooms, sometime in 2008, with construction beginning in 2009.

“We have a whole other set of guests that come through the back door and their experience isn’t up to speed yet.”