Butler News

A source of pride for New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, the Glasgow Square Theatre is a vibrant addition to the waterfront along the town’s East River. The eye-catching building was built by Higgins Construction, a Butler Builder® in nearby Trenton, and designed by Sperry & Partners Architects of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is part of an improvement program that began around 20 years ago.

“The town of New Glasgow hired planners to come in and look at the polluted river going through our town,” recalls resident Jim Mitchell. “We joined other towns in the area to put in a new sewage system and treatment plant. When we cleaned up the river, the planners set out some ideas of what we could do to make the riverfront useful.”

The Riverfront Development Society was formed, and oversaw, among other things, the building of a marina, a walking trail and a boat launch. Next on the agenda was a community performing arts center, says Mitchell, who was at that time president of the Riverfront Development Society.

The society had started an annual three-day outdoor music CANADA festival, which was drawing 10,000-12,000 people. “We needed a more permanent facility for it. That’s where we came up with the idea of an indoor and outdoor theatre,” Mitchell explains.

The society approached the town, province and federal government and raised approximately $2 million to build and furnish the project. They chose the same riverside site the festival used already—the location of a former shipyard that was once part of the town’s shipbuilding industry.

A Unique Design

Sperry & Partners’ design evoked that historic era. The theatre building was wedge shaped—with the wide end facing a large parking lot, and its rounded point jutting toward the river like the prow of a ship. A striking entry rotunda to one side gave audiences access to the box office, restrooms and the main part of the building.

The wide end of the wedge would serve as the theatre itself—with huge doors that opened to form an outside stage for an audience seated on grandstands in the parking lot. For indoor performances before an audience of up to 295 people, the outside doors would be closed and the stage direction reversed. The pointed end of the building would serve as the theatre’s green room (actors’ waiting room).

The concept was a success, but the cost to build the theatre with conventional construction methods—as designed—was too high. Royce Williston of Higgins Construction, who had been invited to bid on the project, suggested an alternative.

A Systems Approach

“We offered to re-engineer the design to eliminate costs by using Butler® building systems for the theatre and green room portion of the building,” he explains. After considering Higgins’ proposal carefully, the Riverfront Development Society agreed.

Jim Mitchell also served as chairman of the Glasgow Square development project. “We put our own manager on site, and I looked after the day-to-day progress, heading the construction committee,” he says. The architect stayed on board as a consultant, and the committee subcontracted the trades.

Higgins Construction worked with Butler to convert the wedge-shaped portion of the building to a Widespan™ structural framing system with an MR-24™ standing seam roof system. Because the building tapered, each bay had to be a different size, while the eave height of each bay had to remain consistent for the building’s perimeter gutters. “It was a very complex design,” Williston says.

The wide end of the building also presented challenges. “Because of the many entrances to the theatre, the cross bracing is only in the top half of that bay,” Williston explains. “And the Butler structure had to support the big doors for the end wall of the building to open up for the outdoor stage. We framed it as we would an airplane hangar. The doors roll back.”

The Riverfront Development Society was extremely pleased with the conversion. “We couldn’t have asked for a better contractor,” Mitchell says.

An Unconditional Success

The theatre opened with a three-night multicultural celebration involving all ethnic groups in the area, and it has remained a huge success. “The entertainers and the public have certainly taken to it, and it has excellent acoustics,” Mitchell says. “Because of the versatility of the Butler portion of the building, we can accommodate anything from a wedding reception to special performances from outside artists. We’ve even run several theatre arts classes—it’s really been a multi-use building for us,” he concludes.