Arts Front & Center

Lake Placid Center for the Arts is the only year-round multi-arts complex within a 45-mile radius in New York State’s North Country, and a vital source of arts engagement for the Adirondack region. Just as we boast some of the country’s finest athletic facilities, our community also deserves a world-class arts center and cultural hub.

Our current facility has outlived its useful life after five decades of rich and robust service to our community. The campus faces critical issues that need to be addressed, including:

1) Limits on our service to the community as programs grow beyond the capacity of our current buildings.

2) Worsening structural challenges in our building foundations, roof and outdated mechanical systems.

3) Poor visibility due to the set-back location on Algonquin Drive.

4) Lack of accessibility for all patrons, students, and performers.

 By rebuilding our facility, we will:

1) Create a space that is accessible and welcoming to all.

2) Foster a larger pool of home-grown talent by developing a community of local artists ranging from young students to professionals at the top of their field.

3) Attract the nation’s most acclaimed artists, musicians, and dancers to the Lake Placid area.

4) Ensure Lake Placid’s legacy as a beacon for arts and culture in the North Country region and beyond.

The Lake Placid Center for the Arts (LPCA) is building a new modern facility, which will be a destination for artistic excellence, and an essential driver to boosting cultural tourism in the North Country region. Stemming from an urgent need to replace our 50 year-old home–which is not fully accessible and has outlived its useful life–our new building will enable us to expand our programming, create new jobs, and reach a wider audience amidst our stunning backdrop of the Adirondack Park.

In this first phase of a three-phase project, the current Annex building will be replaced by a new 300-seat theater, a visual arts gallery, a flexible education space, and a lobby for community gatherings and performances. Projected to be completed in 2026, this new building will move our main center of operations to the front of our campus, dramatically improving our street visibility, and bringing arts and culture to the forefront of our community.

We hope to retain the intimacy of our house that audiences have long loved about our current venue. Additionally, we are not fixing a capacity issue, we are fixing an accessibility issue so that we can increase and improve the utilization of the space. We anticipate the overall seasonal audience will grow by presenting more shows in a state of the art venue, and improved accessibility will help attract new audiences as well as performers and organizations who currently cannot perform in our inaccessible space.

After careful consultation with contractors and consultants, it was determined that it will be much more expensive ($2.13 more per square foot) to renovate our current facility than to build a new structure. A new building will also open up a plethora of expanded programming opportunities, increasing our utilization in our performance space by 63% and drawing twice the ticket holders we currently welcome each year.

We are trying to be very mindful about how we determine what should be done with the current venue after the new facility is built. We are investigating and exploring options with community design charrettes and hope to have some ideas to consider soon. In the meantime, we will continue to use the current Theatre building as construction moves forward on the Annex building.

In June 2023, LPCA was awarded a $7.5 million grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. Receiving this historic award means our project is now a possibility, but this is just the beginning! The NYSCA grant is a great starting point, but won’t cover all of the costs – we’ll need to rally a lot of resources to build the accessible, sustainable multi-purpose center that our community deserves.

Our new facility is on track to achieve LEED Silver certification, and will be much more energy efficient than our current 50-year-old home. We’re moving from a poorly insulated and inefficient structure to one that will be fully electric and simpler to maintain. 

As part of the green building initiative, our architects have designed a new building envelope that will use recycled materials and ensure that the facility will exteriorly perform at the highest level of energy efficiency. Highlights will include:

1) A new, all electric mechanical system for heating and cooling.

2) Better insulation and a sloped roof to protect against harsh North Country winters.

3) New stormwater treatment systems to comply with current local code.

4) Sustainable building practices like the incorporation of recycled materials and reuse of elements from the existing structure.

We are working with a fantastic team of consultants helping to lead and manage the project:

Marvel Design (Architect)

Marvel has designed some of the most striking cultural buildings of the past two decades, including St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, Broadway’s Lyric Theatre, and TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Polise Consulting Engineers (MEP)

Polise has collaborated with Marvel on a number of past projects and has engineered notable cultural spaces such as NYU’s Kimmel Center for University Life and the Lycée Francas de New York.

Silman (Structural Engineer)

Silman has also collaborated with Marvel on projects such as St. Ann’s Warehouse and has provided structural engineering on high profile projects such as the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial.

Charcoalblue (Theatre Consultant)

Charcoalblue, the world’s leading multinational theater, acoustic and experience design consultancy, serves as our theater consultant. Their portfolio of clients include London’s National Theatre and Royal Opera House, Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, the Sydney Theatre Company in Australia, and the Luminato Festival in Toronto.

DBI Projects (Project Management)

DBI is a leading project management firm that has managed hundreds of significant real estate and capital projects in the cultural, education, residential, and commercial sectors. Their clients include such notable arts institutions as St. Ann’s Warehouse and The Perelman Center at the World Trade Center.

AD Hamingson & Associates (Capital Campaign + Strategic Planning Consultant)

A.D. Hamingson and Associates is a full-service consulting firm providing strategic guidance to their clients on fundraising and organizational planning. Their clients include St. Ann’s Warehouse, Building for the Arts, Rattlestick Theatre, and Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.

LPCA’s project to build a new year-round arts center will transform the arts landscape of Lake Placid for residents and tourists alike, and revitalize the North Country’s reputation as a multifaceted region with cultural offerings of the highest quality. 

As our ticketed audience swells due to our expanded programming and stunning new facility, so too will their spending–on everything from local retail and post-show drinks, to transportation and childcare costs associated with their visit. All told, we project future audiences will spend a combined $1.8M annually in addition to their tickets and on-site purchases, a 20% increase from current spending. Through organizational and audience spending combined, we calculate that our project will support 148 full-time equivalent jobs in the region, and contribute a projected $167,152 in local taxes to Essex County and $273,073 in state taxes to Albany.

1) Strategic Planning: Beginning in early 2022, LPCA began inviting community members to discuss how LPCA is (and is not) meeting the needs of our community during a months-long strategic planning process. Participation from a strategic planning committee comprised of LPCA staff, board members and outside members of the community allowed us to gather feedback that will continue to inform decision-making throughout the course of the project. 

2) Design Charrettes: As we begin design development this fall, we look forward to your participation in feedback sessions that will be open to interested community members. (See Learn More section in the sidebar!)

3) Your ongoing feedback: We are grateful to hear from you at any moment throughout the project – the better we understand the needs of our friends, neighbors and visitors, the better job we can do of designing a center that works for everyone. (See Learn More section in the sidebar!)

A design charrette is a collaborative meeting during which the LPCA and architectural consultants will share work with our community, partner artists and arts organizations, and other stakeholders. The idea is to talk through designs to explore and share diverse ideas about what the future arts center will look like.

Check out our Learn More section to stay in the loop about this exciting project.