LEWISTON – From the stage, it looks like a new jewel in an antique box – a combination of stained glass windows, ivory-colored columns, sloped burgundy seating and rails of wrought iron and polished brass.
Changes here, at the Franco-American Heritage Center at St. Mary’s, are no longer subtle.
Even sound works differently now, since the carpenters spent much of the summer building a rising platform between the two rows of columns.
The echo in this former Catholic church has been cut in half.
“It’s a different place,” said Richard Martin, program director for the center. “Today, it feels like a performance hall.”
It looks like it, too.
The changes have been coming since 2000, when the center’s leaders bought the granite edifice at Cedar and Lincoln streets from the Roman Catholic Church for $1.
Millions of dollars have already been spent here: installing an elevator, revamping the wiring and heating systems, and restoring granite masonry once in danger of crumbling.
Many of those changes, however, were barely visible. It happened in the walls.
“Stone is stone,” Martin said. “It doesn’t change, not that much.”
Last year, when the center began regular performances, it was in a half-finished space. Most of the seating was in the former church’s wooden pews.
The pews are gone. So is the robin’s egg blue paint, which one former parishioner guessed was a donation. It was a good color for an egg, not for walls, he said.
When it’s complete in mid-October, the center will have a new lighting system and seats for 453 people.
Other summer work included a ticket window, public restrooms and ramps.
Above it all are refinished arches accenting a newly painted, night-blue ceiling.
The official unveiling comes on Nov. 5, when the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra is scheduled to headline its second annual benefit and gala.
Martin has tried out many of the new seats, trying to capture the view of the stage from every vantage and putting himself in the audience’s place.
Some people have glimpsed the new venue, already.
The center aims to overwhelm people, especially who knew this place before.
“I see faces,” Martin said. “I see looks.”
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