A $13.4 million renovation of the Music Hall was launched Thursday to refurbish what Mayor Kay Barnes called “the magnificence of this building that is an icon of the community.”

Opened in 1935, the Music Hall had its last renovation 25 years ago — and the place is again showing its age.

The Music Hall’s classic art deco fixtures and styling will be polished up and ramped up with more candle-power. The building’s luxurious woodwork and grandiose displays of decorative marble, brass and leather will all remain in place.

The two biggest changes will be almost invisible to visitors: the stage gets 15 feet deeper, and back-of-the-house dressing rooms, stage rigging, mechanical, plumbing and other infrastructure get modernized.

The theater’s 2,400 seats will be replaced with slightly wider chairs and then realigned for better audience sight lines.

The old seats, still in good condition, are expected to be installed in the City Council’s meeting chambers and other public venues.

When the expansion and facelift is completed in February 2007, the Music Hall for the first time will accommodate Broadway’s largest touring shows such as “The Lion King” that now bypass Kansas City for lack of a large-enough venue.

In ceremonies Thursday with the Music Hall’s marble grand foyer staircase as a backdrop, City Manager Wayne Cauthen pledged the finished product will be “a world-class” theater that will play a central role in Kansas City’s downtown entertainment renaissance.

“We are repositioning this building for another 70 years,” said Reeves W. Wiedman, principal in Helix Architecture + Design, who has long sung the praises of the Music Hall as an American “art deco masterpiece second only to Radio City Music Hall in New York.”

Taxpayers will pick up the tab for the Music Hall’s facelift. But Cauthen said about half of the construction cost is expected to be covered through money saved in a City Hall bond refinancing deal earlier this year.

The upgrade will not require surcharges on Music Hall event tickets, said Chuck Eddy, a City Council member and chairman of the Convention Center Expansion Oversight Committee.

Kansas City’s nonprofit Theater League that has presented Broadway musicals and other productions at the Music Hall for 30 years appears to have lost the Music Hall booking contract that the council put out for bid earlier this year.

Starting in 2007, the Music Hall is expected to be marketed and booked by Live Nation, a national firm that presents Broadway shows across North America, in a working partnership with the nonprofit Starlight Theatre Association.

A council committee has recommended Live Nation, and Eddy said the matter could be voted on as early as next week.

The council earlier this year gave its blessing to the Music Hall upgrade as part of a $129 million bond sale to refinance existing debt at Bartle Hall and Kemper Arena while tapping new financing for improvements to the convention center and the Municipal Auditorium parking garage.

At one point last year the Theater League pledged $1.5 million toward the effort.

Eddy said Live Nation made an identical cash commitment to the project.

He said those funds will go toward a modest second phase of reconstruction that will modernize the Music Hall’s public restrooms and clean up the exterior walls.

Oscar McGaskey, Jr., director of the city’s Convention and Entertainment Centers office, said the construction schedule will not disrupt holiday performances of “The Nutcracker” which are to be staged Dec. 1 through Dec. 24.

Reproduced with permission of The Kansas City Star © Copyright 2006 The Kansas City Star. All rights reserved. Format differs from original publication. Not an endorsement.

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