January 30, 2018
This is “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.
Today’s
story will be continued over a series of Tuesday. It is about the C.L. Hoover
Opera House and the information is taken from a paper written by Rob Stevens
for the Division of Continuing Education at Kansas State University. He wrote:
“When Mr. and Mrs. Fred Bramlage gave the former Colonial Theater Building
(which is now the Opera House) to the City of Junction City in November of 1982
to be used as a convention center and home of the Junction City Little Theater,
many people in the community looked for the day the former symbol of the town’s
culture and power would come alive again.
The city accepted the fight, the JCLT Board immediately put its own
Opera House Committee into operation and the future looked bright for the
tired, old building with its white painted bricks badly chipping and its worn
out roof springing leaks.
Three and a
half years later, after numerous organizations, boards, panels and individuals
had spent thousands and thousands of hours trying to come to a logical solution
as to what the next function of the building was to be, the voters of Junction
City rejected an $840,000 bond proposal to renovate the structure.”
Even though
the bond issue failed, The Junction City Little Theater was determined and
committed to the project. An Opera House Committee was formed to see it
through. Original committee members
were Jolana Montgomery, Mona Kessinger, Riley Werts, Gretchen Haas, John
Triplett and Rob Stevens.
The city
solicited architectural bids for a renovation of the building. Seven firms submitted bids. With the recommendation of the Committee and
City Engineer Tom Neal – Peters Kubota Glenn of Lawrence, the firm which had
designed the new Dorothy Bramlage Public Library, received the $4,500 bid with
the entire cost to be paid by the city.
To be continued
next Tuesday …. On “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical
Society.
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