Concordia breaks ground for new Music Center

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The campus is currently the music department, Dr. Kurt von Kampen said with a smile.

With a $17 million construction project planned for the Music Center, offices and instruments are scattered across Concordia University.

“God willing, it will be ready to open in fall 2022,” Interim President Dr. Russ Sommerfeld said.

“Music is synonymous with Concordia. It’s in our ID. Music and theology and music and scripture go together.”

“It’s been part of Concordia since our founding,” von Kampen said.

“We can teach and preach, but with music, you contact the deep emotions of people,” Sommerfeld said.

The recital hall will remain in its current location, but the office and rehearsal spaces in the building will be torn down and rebuilt. The new center will be 46,544 square feet, up from the current 40,000 square feet. Ceilings in the band and choir rehearsal spaces will be seven feet higher than they currently are.

The project started with staff trying to figure out how to update the elevators in the rehearsal and office areas, Sommerfeld said.

“The elevator was necessary from the beginning,” von Kampen, chair of the music department at Concordia, said. “There’s always equipment being moved. Thankfully we’ve had no major problems.”

“God blessed in ways not anticipated,” Sommerfeld said. “Thanks be to God for the generous gifts.”

Von Kampen said the new basement will include a new theater with higher ceilings and new lighting and sound systems.

The western box with its 10 pipe organs and offices will be remodeled. A recording studio will also be added.

The east section of the building will be raised to the level of the west side, von Kampen said. The building will then have three levels instead of six.

“When it was built in the 1960s, they were interested in multi-level facilities,” von Kampen said.

The band and choir rooms are too small for the group sizes today. High school students who come for campus visits see facilities less than what they’re used to, von Kampen said.

The new walls in the building will help contain sound in the rehearsal spaces. Directors will be able to adjust acoustics, as well.

The office suite will be on the main floor, along with Steinway piano studios, von Kampen said.

With the recording studio, directors will be able to record rehearsals to use a teaching tools, he said. Students will also be able to record their own music, and small groups can record in the studio, as well.

The updated facility will allow Concordia to offer a minor in recording and expand its emphases in music, von Kampen said.

While the Music Center is under construction, the music department has scattered. Jesse Hall is currently “music central,” von Kampen said, adding that a lot of pianos are there. Classes and offices are also in the Link Library, with practice studios in Esther Dormitory. Thom Leadership Education Center’s auditorium is also being used as a music space with eight or nine pianos in storage there, and the Dunklau Center is being used for storage.

The viewing room at Walz is a rehearsal space, as are St. John Lutheran Church and the auditorium in Weller Hall. Weller is the main rehearsal venue for the A Capella Choir and the concert band, von Kampen said.

He was grateful for how helpful and open the faculty, staff and administration has been with the additional use of the spaces.

Organ performance majors have used the organs in Weller Hall and St. John and Faith Lutheran churches, and other area churches have opened for practices, as well. Three manual electric organs are in the basement of Weller for practice, von Kampen said.

Sommerfeld said Concordia will endow a maintenance program for the Music Center like it did with Dunklau to help hold down tuition costs for students.

Von Kampen said moving day was quite an undertaking, and the department’s administrative assistant, Debbie Brutlag, worked hard to get it set up and organized. Professors moved their offices over spring break and everything else was moved last week.

The faculty was involved in the planning and worked through three different ideas, von Kampen said. The first was to add an elevator, but the building still needed new heating, ventilation and air conditioning and handicapped accessibly ramps. That meant a loss of space, he said.

The second idea was more grandiose, while the third was the one the university settled on. Sinclair Hille is the project architect and consulted with HDR, the firm that designed the Holland Center.

Dave Kumm, executive vice president CFO/COO, accounting, finance and operations at Concordia has been instrumental in developing the project, Sommerfeld said. Kumm has been involved in the last four major building projects at CU.

“He is very good at what he does,” Sommerfeld said.

Former CU President Brian Friedrich and incoming president Bernard Bull are also supportive of the project, Sommerfeld and von Kampen said.