Kroc Center theater receiving near $800K upgrade

COEUR d’ALENE — The Salvation Army Kroc Center theater is in process of receiving approximately $800,000 worth of upgrades.

Opened in 2009 with new equipment, theater and events manager Trigger Weddle said as time passed the theater equipment started to fail and needed replacement.

“We’re really excited to have all this new stuff,” Weddle said.

The biggest-cost item to replace was the fly system, the system that drops down lighting equipment, scenery and more from above the stage during the show.

“It helps create all the magic,” Weddle said.

The old fly system started to miss its marks about three years ago, and sometimes ended up inches off from where the equipment was supposed to land. That was a safety issue.

The new fly system, about a $520,000 replacement, is whisper-quiet and accurate to the millimeter.

The second most important upgrade was upgrading the incandescent bulbs to LED lighting which is cleaner, more efficient, doesn’t get hot and doesn’t require gels to change colors.

“You can have every color of the rainbow at the touch of your fingertips without having to slide gel packs in and out,” Weddle said. “LED is the wave of the future.”

Replacing the lights was the first thing on the list after the flight system, Weddle said, costing about $210,000 for new instruments and a new lighting board.

“We just were down to where we didn’t have enough lighting instruments to really get a nice clean wash on stage,” Weddle said.

The new LED lights will be a noticeable change for the actors because they don’t emit heat like the old incandescent bulbs, which could raise the temperature of the stage by 10 degrees.

Eight robotic spotlights were also put in with the ability to be programmed to follow actors and can be changed to provide special effects such as lightning.

“It’s exciting,” said Seth Weddle, a theater technician.

Seth Weddle said the upgrades will make his job a lot easier behind the scenes.

Other upgrades included replacing the projectors for approximately $38,000, adding safely aisle lighting for approximately $13,000, painting the floor and purchasing a new cyclorama for approximately $2,000.

River Hopkins, technical coordinator, said she’s excited about all the safety lights they’ve implemented in the aisles and stairways.

“The funny thing about all the projects that we’ve done is they aren't transparent to the patron,” Trigger Weddle said. “The regular patron coming in won’t know that we've just painted the floor, that we’ve put half a million dollars into the fly system, or that the lighting system lighting their 4-year-old dancing on stage is brand new.”

“That’s kind of the things that you take for granted, but we’re really excited,” Trigger Weddle said.

Trigger Weddle said to fund the items they got support from the Salvation Army through petitions because it wasn’t part of the Kroc's budget.

Most big-ticket items in the Kroc have funds set aside over years to replace them as needed on a timely basis, however, Trigger Weddle said for some bizarre reason the theater was overlooked.

Now it’s all capitalized so in 20 years when it’s time to buy new equipment, it won’t be such a shock, Trigger Weddle said.

The project was supposed to take place almost two years ago, but COVID hit and slowed the process down, and the KROC center was closed for two months. Once they geared back up, equipment became harder to find and the project was postponed.

Trigger Weddle said they decided to have the upgrades done in January as it’s usually a dark time for the theater.

She said it started out as a four-week project but turned into a six-week project and is scheduled to be complete on Feb. 15, with a theater group coming in Feb. 20.

On average pre-COVID, Trigger Weddle said the theater usually has something showing 300 days of a year.

“We’re getting back to these numbers now,” Trigger Weddle said. “It’s very, very busy.”