“It was a terrible catastrophe. We almost thought ‘OK, we’re done.’ We almost closed but we decided not to,” he said.
His wife, Debbie, said, “I didn’t come in here because I cried so much. It was visually terrible.”
The theater, which had hosted numerous events, including concerts, wrestling matches and singing contests in recent years, sat dormant in 2010 while Hall waited for his insurance claim to come in, All told, the theater sustained more than $300,000 in damage, Hall said. That’s more than the $250,000 he paid for the property when he bought it in 2006.
Fortunately, the damage, though extensive, was not structural, said Gary Smith, a theater expert from Dayton who has worked on the building since 2009. For the past several weeks, a 15-member crew has been working to get the opera house back in shape, with a reopening planned for March 2011. That’s when Hall’s company, Road Apple Music, plans to launch its third Miami Valley Idol talent contest.
The flood also has forced Hall to relocate his business. The Road Apple Music Store, which had been in the former Sorg Opera Company offices, is moving to the space formerly occupied by Broadway News. The former store will become office space.
“Despite what you may have heard, the Sorg is here to stay. Ed does not give up,” Hall said.
Volunteers help Sorg owner make repairs to opera house
Nine months ago, the Sorg Opera House nearly drowned when a water main over the stage broke.
“Nobody knew where the shut-off was. We had to research the records to find out where it was,” Gary Smith, a theater expert who has worked on theater programming in recent years, said of the Jan. 15 event.
Ed Hall, who has owned the building since 2004, said, “This giant water main completely blew out. No one could shut it off for a day.”
He said the break was due to age, not weather.
“The basement had up to 5 feet of water, and there was a must (odor) clear out to the front door,” Smith said.
But after the shut-off was finally found behind the building, the damage was done. The 119-year-old wooden stage had buckled. The theater seats were soaked. Peeling paint, which already was a problem, became so bad that it revealed red patches on the right side that might be the original layer, Smith said.
Crews have been working the past several weeks to repair the damage, with the insurance claim complicated by the building’s historic status. Hall would not say who the insurance carrier was, except to say it wasn’t local.
Some of the damage remains. The ladies’ room, on the right side near the auditorium entrance, was still in ruins Wednesday , with fallen plaster littering the floor. Most of the seats in the theater remain covered. The baby grand piano that had been on the stage was ruined.
However, much of the damage has been repaired. The original stage remains intact and has been sanded down. The large backdrop behind the stage, a mural of the Cincinnati skyline dating back to the 1940s, also survived.
Hall said he has received help from a number of sources. About 15 volunteers have been working on repairs, and Miami University Middletown student Steven Conly is helping to complete the repairs as part of his Bachelor of Integrative Studies program.
And with this work already ongoing, Hall said he doesn’t plan to restore Sorg to its state before the water main break. He wants to go even further, repairing the Commercial Building and renovating the fourth floor ballroom and more.
Howard Johnson, a member of the still existing Sorg Opera Company, which used the theater for more than a decade, has not been pleased by the building’s use and renovations in recent years.
The last time Sorg held a show there was a production of “Fiddler on the Roof” about four years ago — and the group says they don’t plan to come back.
“I’m not at all in favor of what’s gone on in the past. They’ve made it unusable for our purposes. I would like to see it restored to its former glory,” Johnson said.
“We had no interest in working with the people there. It’s not usable for the clientele we would attract,” he added.
Hall purchased the building in 2006 with a partner John Ross, who later left. The Sorg Opera Company had produced operas there from 1990 to 2005 — buckling under financial strain when its sister company, Whitewater Opera in Richmond, Ind., folded in 2002. The company produces only one holiday show a year that plays at Dave Finkelman Auditorium. For several years, the building operated as a movie theater called the Colonial.
“I’m not going to let it get destroyed like other buildings in town. This is probably the biggest piece of history we’ve got,” Hall said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2836 or erobinette@coxohio.com.
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