More space, tech upgrades part of improvements
By DONNA THORNTON, Editor
Snead State Community College’s Tom Bevill Center will get a major renovation, with work set to start in the coming weeks and continue for about 14 months.
It’s time, according to SSCC President Joe Whitmore.
The building originally opened in 1992, bringing Boaz a 42,000 square foot facility with a auditorium seating about 1,000.
After the work is done, it will be an approximately 50,000-square-foot structure, including a state-of-the-art digital sound, video and theatrical lighting systems.
A glass-enclosed entry lobby will be added, along with stadium-style feature stairs, multipurpose meeting rooms, a black-box theater and gallery space for exhibitions and community engagement.
“Since 1992, the building has really declined,” Whitmore said. “Some of the mechanical systems are not working good. There were some design issues that made ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) access difficult. Back in 1992, there wasn’t as much scrutiny placed on that.”
The decline in mechanical systems allowed moisture to get in the building and some of he sheetrock. It was tested for mold (none showed up) but the moisture affected air quality in the building.
“When you walked in the building it just felt kind of stuffy,” he said. “The air wasn’t flowing well.”
“We needed to really do a complete renovation,” Whitmore explained.
The renovation work will include the addition of some new space, for a smaller theater/event space on the campus, in addition to extensive updating in the existing building.
“The bones of the building are good,” he said, so tearing it down wasn’t really an option. Still, addressing the air quality, HVAC and electrical work is a huge job.
“The unfortunate part about that is you can spend several million dollars fixing that, and you won’t see anything because everything looks the same,” Whitmore said. “You’re just fixing the underlying problem.”
It wouldn’t do any good to create a building that looks good without that underlying work.
“It took a lot of planning, a lot of preliminary fundraising to make sure we were going to be able to do it right,” Whitmore said. “We ended up completely closing the building a little over a year ago.”
Everyone moved out and Snead stopped having events there. Things the college wanted to keep were moved out.
Knowing they would be doing the renovation, he said, the closing was a part of paving the way to get it done.
“We put it out to bid last October,” he said, and Murray Construction of Birmingham got the bid. Whitmore said Snead has worked with the contractor before and was pleased with the good bid received on the project.
The Alabama Community Collect System Board of Trustees approved the project at its July meeting.
Snead officials met with Murray and subcontractors July 16, he said, and the construction crews should mobilize the first week or two of August. Whitmore said the area around the Bevill Center will be fenced off and crews will use the parking lot for their equipment and staging areas.
Completion time is expected to be about 14 months, and he feels good about the timeline. “If everything goes right, we should take possession of the building in December 2027,” he said, and move into it in spring 2028.
“What we have planned is to demo the whole front of the building to correct the ADA issues — get rid of those steps up front — and have the entrance on the ground floor,” Whitmore explained. “We’re going to redo the elevators inside to be code compliant because they are really small. We’re going to get them to the right size.”
Right now, he said, the building has no lobby to speak of, so the contractor will be building out from the front of the building to create a glass atrium at the entryway, to give a good space for receptions or events after performances.
“Inside the theater itself, we’re taking it down to the bare bones. We’re going back in with new seating, new ceilings, new sound baffling on the walls, a new stage area. We’re moving the sound engineer booth out of the auditorium into a new space in the back. We’re replacing everything digitally. New lighting — it’s state of the art, everything on the stage area.
Adding office space underneath the stage. “It’s stadium seating so that creates some space underneath,” he said.
“We’re building an addition which will be a ‘black box theater.’” It will be used for small events, seating 100-150 people. It’s going to be designed more for smaller performances, lectures, faculty meetings. Whitmore said it’s going to be flexible space and will help the fine arts department teach lighting and sound.
“We have degrees in theater and performing arts but we have a lot of students who are interested in performing arts but don’t want to be actors and be on stage; they want to do the sound and lighting. That’s going to give us laboratory space so we can start incorporating those programs and help those students so they can move on to whatever career they want in that area.
“It’s a very exciting time for us. It’s going to be a state of the art building,” the president said.
The center’s main theater will retain the current seating capacity – about 1,000 people, and make the facility more usable.
“It’s for the community,” Whitmore said, because the building is used for graduations and other events. He said he’s working with Mayor Tim Walker to partner on things the city can sponsor that will give the city access to the building.
“We’re trying to create some things that will be a destination,” he said. “Obviously the primary focus is going to be education, to give our students the opportunity to showcase their craft and be able to have their recitals and performances with their families, but also an opportunity for the community to come and have concerts, church events or guest speakers.”
“It can’t come fast enough,” Whitmore said. Sometimes, he explained, it is easier to build from the ground up. When you get into demolition work, he said, there can be things you didn’t expect.
“We’re anticipating those kind of delays,” he said, in the projected timeline.
Most of the work will be inside, he said, and less subject to the weather, but there will be a new roof and new exterior, and the addition will “come out of the ground.”
The total cost of the project will be about $25 million for the renovation and new equipment.
The name of the building will remain the Tom Bevill Center, but there will be a new naming opportunity for the Black Box Theater, Whitmore said, should someone want to sponsor it.
Since the Bevill Center was shut down last year, a good bit of money was spent upgrading technical fixtures in Fielder Hall, new screens and a new light package, because the 400-seat space is the only one available.
Fielder Hall — which celebrated a 100th anniversary just a couple of years ago — is still in good shape otherwise.
The Tom Bevill Center has been a part of the Snead State Community College campus since 1992. The structure will get a major renovation over the next 14 months, including an 8,000-square-foot expansion, technical upgrades, accessiblity improvements and more in a $22 million project. Photo by DONNA THORNTON | The Leader
