Wortham Center basement tour reveals heartbreaking scene of Harvey’s damage
By now, many Houstonians know the sights and smells of flood recovery all too well, but the scale of the job ahead at the Wortham Theater Center still has shock and awe power.
Officials of Gilbane, the construction contractor, and Houston First, which operates the center, took members of the media through parts of the downtown theater Friday morning to demonstrate why the show there will not go on any time soon. (Performances have been canceled through mid-May.)
In the not-fully-gutted and still wet basement, which was submerged during Hurricane Harvey’s flooding, dozens of workers removed mountains of black bags full of putrid-smelling material and piles of soggy drywall debris from room after ravaged room: The orchestra’s lounge, with its long rows of lockers. The wardrobe shops, with their washing machines. Dressing rooms, with their mirrors broken and coated in silt. The mechanical room for the entire building. Nothing in the 60,000-square-foot basement was spared.
In the lowest-level lobby of the building, near the tunnel that leads to the Theater District parking garage, walls and floors have been stripped to steel studs and concrete. If it weren’t for the musty smell that infiltrates one’s nose, even through a protective mask, this would be easy to mistake for a new construction site. It’s that bare, only dirtier.
Inside the Brown Theater, the center’s largest space, carpet has been stripped away near the orchestra pit, but the red velvet seats look untouched. (The first few rows have been covered in plastic to protect them from dust.)
What looks like miles of clear plastic ductwork snakes everywhere through the building. Motors and blowers of all kinds whir at different pitches — pumps, fans, wet vacs, generators.
Houston First representative Carolyn Campbell said the company’s board approved a $35 million initial budget to pump out and stabilize all three of the city’s damaged Theater District structures, including Jones Hall and the district’s massive parking garage. But that was just phase one of what will be a long and very expensive process, Campbell said. Gilbane expected to have a more complete assessment of damages and the cost of repairs within three weeks.