Theater in the Round
New Downtown Venue Comes to Gilbert
By K. Robert Wendel

The Valley of the Sun has long been accused of lacking culture, but a new theater in Gilbert is helping change that perception.

The doors to the new, $1.8 million Hale Theater in downtown Gilbert opened July 25, drawing hundreds of theater patrons to the 12,000-sq.-ft. project, which seats 380 people in a "theater in the round." The type of layout gives the most "bang for buck" according to Dave Dietlein, the new theater's owner.

"When you are designing a theater, you have to get the most amount of seating in the smallest amount of square footage," Dietlein said. "The theater in the round also gives us more balcony space for overflow seating."

Built on a slab-on-grade foundation, the project features masonry walls with interior wood framing, with work starting in December 2002. Phoenix-based Fyffe Masonry erected the CMU walls while Mesa-based Highlander Construction framed the theater.

Composite wood I-beams were used in the seating section for risers, which will be topped off with wood flooring. Because contractors needed lifts to finish the high ceiling work, the seating was the last part of the project.

"We had to frame the building then complete all the rough framing inside and then get our inspection, then finish the electrical, fire and sprinkler systems, and then come back in and frame the seating," said Mike Greenwood, project manger for Scottsdale-based general contractor GP West Construction. "We did it for logistics, because when the ceiling is 28-ft. in the air, you need hydraulic lifts, otherwise, we would have spent a lot of extra time going up and down ladders."

As with any exposition or theater space, acoustics are a key factor when designing a project. Since this theater is one of five, prior acoustical experience allowed engineers to provide solutions without reinventing the wheel. Interior framed walls were stuffed with insulation to deaden sound, while mechanical designers took steps to reduce noise from equipment.

"It's a theater, so we try to keep the design as quiet as possible," said Doug Lovell, a mechanical engineer with Phoenix-based Peterson Associates Consulting Engineers. "We had to locate the equipment in areas where the noise wouldn't resonate down into the theater. That gave us long enough duct runs so we didn't have to worry much about the noise."

One of the wrenches thrown into the work happened when the town of Gilbert switched from the Uniform Building Code to the International Building Code, forcing architects to rewrite contract documents and revise plans.

"The town changed codes between the time the theater was designed and when it went to construction," said architect Ken O'Dell of Ken O'Dell Architects in Pine, Ariz.
"I've been working with the UBC for 30 years, and many cities are still under that code, but the town, for some reason changed, which created a lot of confusion."

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Theater in the Round