By GLYNIS HART
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CLAREMONT – The historic Claremont Opera House, dedicated in 1897, still has a working bell and clockworks for the four faces of the clock that looks out over the city. Peter Fennessy, in charge of maintenance for the building, has just gotten back from vacation and he’s busy: on his list of things to do is replacing the ballast for one of the stage lights.
And checking the buckets. On the back part of the stage and on the stairs leading to the clock tower are telltale drips. Another floor up, empty trash cans and buckets are placed to catch the rain. Outside it’s pouring, but the opera house walls are too thick to let the sound in.
The beautiful old building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and renovated in 1979. Fennessy remembers another renovation in 1995. He spends a lot of his time fighting the inevitable: water.
“It’s too nice a building to let it get like this,” said Fennessy. “It’s costly to do a roof but it’s even more costly when you have to start replacing roof joists and taking it apart.”
The rain sluices down onto a flat roof outside the clockworks room, and then it sits there. There’s a slate roof, a flat roof, and another section of roof over the police station. Two stories below, rain is dripping on the catwalk stairs above the stage; some of the lights for the stage have been damaged, but for now Fennessy is pleased his most recent patches are holding up.
“It won’t last forever, but it’s good,” he said.
Wet insulation in the upper stories of the bell tower no longer serves its purpose and needs to be replaced, but like all the other repairs, it’s a question of money.
On Wednesday, city Planning and Development Director Nancy Merrill took a grant application to the city council for approval. The New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program (LCHIP) grant could supply the funds necessary to fix the roof.
“We applied last year, but we were not successful,” said Merrill. “They said we put too much in, and they encouraged us to do a more focussed application.”
Therefore, although the roof isn’t the only thing that needs fixing, it’s the one they hope to get funded this grant cycle.
The total grant of not more than $750,000 would require a 50-percent matching grant from the city, but wouldn’t get all the work done.
“I learned how much scaffolding costs,” said Merrill. “They’d have to dismantle the existing roof (in part) and that’s not the only roof problem you have. We’re looking at this as a couple of phases.”
Interim City Manager John MacLean urged city council to think ahead. “At some point they’ll ask us if we have our match. We need to think about where it will come from — a capital campaign, or other sources.”
“I just don’t know how much time we have,” said Mayor Charlene Lovett. “It’s only getting worse.”
Councilor Nick Koloski asked whether the council should have a discussion about issuing a bond for the repairs. That would come farther down the road, MacLean offered.
The council approved the grant application.
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