It may have not have taken a city to complete the extensive renovation of Jacobs Music Center, the San Diego Symphony’s soon-to-reopen downtown concert hall.
But it did take a small army of workers — numbering up to 150 a day — nearly four years to remake and reimagine the venue, previously known as Copley Symphony Hall, from top to bottom in their quest to improve the sound quality, sightlines, comfort level and overall functionality of the 95-year-old venue.
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Here is a partial look at just some of what went into the symphony’s extensive, $125 million-plus undertaking. It reopens Sept. 28.
• 1 permanent fixed orchestra shell — designed to blend and project the music with optimal quality to concertgoers in the hall and to the orchestra’s musicians onstage.
• 1 new rear-stage choral terrace — which, for concerts that do not include a vocal ensemble, will provide two elevated rows of additional audience seating.
• 2 miles of piping for the new HVAC system — which, to eliminate noise and vibrations, has been suspended between the roof of the concert hall and the first level of the parking structure above it.
• 2 miles of new plumbing systems — including new backstage men’s and women’s restrooms for the orchestra members.
• 2 new locker rooms for the orchestra — with 50 lockers in the men’s locker room and 51 in the women’s.
• 3 tuning chambers — one at the rear of the stage, one at the rear of the main floor seating area and one at the rear of the balcony, each specially designed to improve the sound quality experienced by performers and audience members alike.
• 5 water-refilling stations — which enable orchestra members to quench their thirst without needing to walk from one floor or side of the backstage area to another.
• 5 miles of lifting cable for the fly system — used to suspend the stage lighting, acoustic reflectors, video screens and more.
• 6 new balcony boxes — 3 on both sides of the stage, with four seats in each box.
• Over 300 cable pulleys — for the lifting cable used with the rigging equipment.
• A 560 square-foot stage lift with a 28.000-pound capacity — to elevate the orchestra’s percussion section on stage, as well pianos, organs and other large instruments that previously had to be wheeled on and off the stage.
• 1,200 cubic yards of new concrete — which was poured for the new slab foundation in the building’s basement, as well as for separate new foundations under the stage and in the concert hall itself to re-rake the venue’s orchestra and rear seating sections.
• 10,000 pounds of newly installed acoustic ceilings and frames— including 20 different-sized, custom-made gold acoustic fiberglass sound reflectors that hang above above the stage.
• 14,000 square feet of previously inaccessible space — which has been used to add four new floors of office and storage areas where previously there had only been two.
• Over 85,000 pounds of rigging equipment and 131 controlled rigging elements — used for individual ceiling pieces, curtains and individual line sets, which are the pipes attached above the stage to hold lighting fixtures and curtains, as well as the motorized winches used to hoist them.
• 225,000 pounds of duct work — the tubes used to circulate cool and heated air throughout the eight-story Jacobs Music Center.
• 300,000 pounds of cement board — used to construct new walls throughout the building to create as much sound isolation as possible in order to improve the acoustics.