LEWISTON — The Franco-American Heritage Center began a $500,000 renovation Monday aimed at creating a meeting hall and cabaret space downstairs to match the upstairs
sophistication of its grand performance hall.

“We want it to be classy,” said Rita Dube, the center’s executive director. “People are constantly impressed by what we’ve done upstairs. We’re hoping to do the same thing down here.”

Millions have been spent on the Little Canada landmark, but the basement — which has hosted generations of bingo games and bean suppers — has seen relatively little money.

Plans call for floor-to-ceiling changes, beginning with the removal of 10 steel columns. The change is meant to open sight lines for a new permanent stage. The columns will be replaced by steel beams and wider columns on either side of the hall.

The work will force the removal of the old, institutional flooring. A new floor will go in its place. Other additions include a wet bar, new kitchen appliances and renovated windows. The windows are currently partly boarded up, with small panes in the center. Each of those is shrouded by contact paper.

“We should at least double the amount of sunlight coming in,” Dube said. Plans also call for a new ceiling, using the best segments of the basement’s existing antique tin ceiling.

Workers began the project Monday by erecting plastic curtains as a precaution against dust. They planned to begin ripping up portions of the foundation with a jackhammer.

The project is expected to take about five months. Regular springtime events — such as the center’s Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations — have been canceled but are likely to return in 2011.

This winter, Dube and others at the center plan to continue to write grants in hopes of getting more money.

The current work came from a $500,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant program that has been kind to the center in the past few years. Grants have totaled about $1.6 million.

The money has been earmarked for poor neighborhoods, and the center is located in one of Maine’s poorest.

The measure for the money is changing, though.

“We may still have a shot at it, but it will be much more competitive,” Dube said.

Either way, the new work is aimed at bringing new revenue into the center. When the work is done, the center ought to be a showpiece for both weddings and receptions, Dube said.

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Daniel Bouffard of Hebert Construction in Lewiston prepares to snap a chalk line in the basement of the Franco-American Heritage Center in Lewiston on Monday. He and co-worker Gaeten Bergeron, holding the other end of the chalk line in the background, were marking where the company plans to dig trenches in the floor for footers to support columns that will hold up the ceiling. The columns will replace the two rows of center columns that will be removed to make open space. It is one of the major renovation projects going on in the former Catholic church.