CALUMET — The Calumet Village Council at its regular monthly meeting Tuesday heard from Karin Cooper, project architect with UP Engineering and Architects, who presented a brief summary of a report on the assessment of the Calumet Theatre Building.

While the structure is considered a single building, Cooper said, the village offices and the theater section are separated by a firewall. For that reason, the report divides the structure into the Village offices/ballroom, and the theater.

The evaluation looked at heating and ventilation of the theater and offices/ballroom; the building envelope, including walls, roof areas, roof insulation, windows and doors, then listed recommendations.

“The reason that we were asked to do this is,” Cooper said, “there are some projects that are being considered by the owners and the leasers of the building and these affect the building as a whole. But even the things that are considered small components, they can have a big, sometimes even negative, affect on the whole building.”

The purpose of the study and the report was to:

• Document existing conditions

• Identify potential areas for improvement

• Assess the impact of modifications on the structure

• Recommendations for planning

• Ensure pending and future modifications adhere to Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties.

The evaluation considered not only the envelope of the building, but also the heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and other components, with the goals of improving thermal comfort for year-round use of the theater and to make energy improvements of the building envelope.

“Currently, there is not enough heat to keep people comfortable in the winter, and no air conditioning,” Cooper said.

The first area of study to be address was the HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) of the building.

The evaluation found that the building currently has no fresh air intake.

Recommendations to correct the problem were suggested by UPEA and include:

• Provide dedicated outdoor air system (DOAS) with energy recovery;

• Meet ventilation code;

• Dehumidify the air;

• Conditions outside air.

The report then divided the structure between the theatre and village, providing recommendations for each:

HVAC — Theater

• Replace existing steam boiler with a new steam boiler;

• Leave the existing radiators and piping;

• Install a Dedicated Outdoor Air System (DOAS).

HVAC — Village Office/Ballroom

• Replace existing hot water boiler and add capacity to the boiler to heat the ballroom;

• Remove unit heaters (space heaters) in ballroom and replace with hot water radiation;

• Install a DOAS system to provide ventilation

Cooper told the council that there are several different components to the building’s systems.

The theater has two systems: the steam boiler, which is out of commission currently due the boiler experiencing a fire. Cooper said that a boiler system in a theater is the ideal way to heat, because it is quiet.

“I want to say that a boiler system in a theater is the ideal way to heat,” Cooper said. “It’s quiet, it uses gravity for using the heat around, and it doesn’t rely on air, fans and things that make noise and take away from the performance.”

The other areas of concern also received recommendations, such as to maintain current levels of insulation and ventilation of the roof areas; inspect all windows for seal and tight closing; restore protective coatings; provide weather stripping at door perimeters; replace existing fire department doors with insulated garage doors in a compatible style.

In response to Cooper’s presentation, Village President Rob Tarvis said: “We’ve got a building that needs millions of dollars in repairs in a village with a $200,000 tax base.”

Tarvis later said, there are $5-10 million in building needs for the structure, adding that the Calumet Theatre building is a perpetual anchor on the village financing.

Calumet Theatre Board President said Dan Jamison said the gist of the presentation was a high-level overview of a presentation the Theatre Board received with the Park Service a week previous.

The report, he said, is the basis of moving forward, creating a road map to get these projects completed.

“What we’re trying to do now is prioritize,” said Jamison, “because we’ve got the cold season coming up and this particular type of boiler, this failure, is, in my opinion, is a one-to-one fix.”

In other words, he said, replacing the burned-out boiler is an easy fix, because there is no need to re-work all of the connections, because the radiators and piping are still intact.

“Somebody just has to re-test the system, and say ‘Yup, it’s still in there, it’s still good.”

The decision now is, he added, to either go with one boiler that rated for 1million BTUs, or two boilers and 700,000 BTUs each. That was the proposal.

“UP Engineers and Architects suggested that we get redundancy in this system,” Jamison said, “and they suggested the same thing to the village side (0f the building), which is circulating hot water. Get two boilers at 70% of the size, and that way, you can always fail them over to each other.”

The report, he said, is the foundation of a 10-year plan for repairing the theater.

In responding to Tarvis’ concerns of the costs involved, John Arnold, historical architect with the National Park Service, who was included in the UPEA evaluation, said what they were asking for was real and long-term solutions to repair a theater of national significance.

“With this guiding document in place, well researched document,” he said, “we would be able to start making good decisions, prioritize decisions — and one of those sections includes fundraising.”

There needs to be some sort of something that needs to happen, Arnold said, beyond the capacity of the village.