Lyric Building: Storefront Reconstruction

The Lyric Center is moving forward in the next step on our building, renovating the main lobby and expanding our performance space into the street level former commercial space. The reconstructed storefront doors now provide egress to meet codes for spaces used for assembly. This will allow us to expand our programs and productions and achieve financial sustainability.

The new storefront has brought much attention to our historic building and our organization. This is proving to be a great impetus to rehabilitation of Virginia's Historic Downtown Commercial District. A grassroots organization of downtown business owners called ReVive Virginia has recently been successful in obtaining grant funding to purchase a vacant building to renovate and kick off a revolving program to provide updated commercial space for new businesses.

The Lyric Storefront Reconstruction Project was widely supported by our community. This is shown by the overwhelming contribution of in-kind materials and volunteer hours which helped us complete the project with the funds available through grants and cash donations.

Energy efficiency was a built-in component to this project. New insulation and insulated glass panels and heavy Douglas Fir doors have replaced the old aluminum and single pane glass that was installed in the 1970's. The prism glass transoms will reduce the need for artificial lighting during the day time.

While conforming to the Secretary of Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, we had the perfect combination for collaboration of architects, construction management and vendors. This project is a great success!