The facility has special significance for MCSD Superintendent Theron Schutte (MHS Class of 1981) and architect Brian Lane (Class of 1984) from INVISION Architecture, the firm working with district leadership to reimagine Miller as the public prepares to vote on a $57 million bond issue that would be paired with $49 million in bonds against the Securing an Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE) one-cent sales tax for a $106 million renovation of the building, which was constructed in 1925.

“I think there’s an importance in every community in preserving the historic pieces of the community, whether that’s in the built form or the memories one makes in the community,” Lane said. “I had the opportunity to spend some time at Miller, not so much in the auditorium but in the gymnasium when I was in junior high… I’ve spent a lot of time at Miller and would certainly love to see it resurrected with a new aesthetic for the community and for the building itself.”

Schutte, who returned to his alma mater as superintendent in 2016, recalled that former President Barack Obama visited Miller in 2012 while he was in office and campaigning for re-election. The MHS auditorium, now known as the Marshalltown Performing Arts Center, was not constructed until 1985 after both Schutte and Lane had graduated.

One of the major objectives of the project, according to the superintendent, is bringing back the original “splendor, luster and ambience” of the auditorium when it was first built. At that time, it included about 900 seats on the first floor and another 250 to 300 on the balcony.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THERON SCHUTTE — A photo from the 1920s shows the auditorium area at the north end of Miller Middle School when it was under construction. The building will turn 100 years old in 2025, and Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) voters will decide the fate of a $57 million bond issue at the polls on Nov. 5. When paired with $49 million in bonds against the Securing an Advanced Vision for Education (SAVE) one-cent sales tax, a successful referendum would provide $106 million to reimagine Miller.

“It was a phenomenal facility within the community, but (another goal is) changing it in the sense of making it a little more multi-purpose than (what it’s been). Because the auditorium, as it currently exists, is strictly a performing arts center, and what we’d like to see is it be able to be utilized in a multitude of ways,” Schutte said.

He said the ideal would be to reduce the number of main floor seats to about 500 and give it more of a black box feel with a floor in front between the stage and the theater seating where tables and chairs could be set up for community functions, a dinner theater and professional development for district staff.

“It could do all of the things that the Orpheum Black Box can do but with significantly more seating capacity,” Schutte said. “I think the other thing that is exciting is that the band and the orchestra programs have always been housed in the basement of the current facility. So we’re excited about the prospects of bringing those programs upstairs, most likely into the old gymnasium assuming that we’re able to build the second gymnasium.”

In meetings with prospective voters and focus groups, Brad Leeper, another architect with INVISION who is one of the firm’s partners, noticed a consensus that the auditorium is “an important community space” and one worth saving.

“If we’re gonna do it, it has to be updated in all those respects and also include some of the support spaces that it just doesn’t have today like a green room, some changing rooms, just some space outside of the auditorium itself that’s really kind of important in terms of doing productions and making it a multi-purpose space,” he said. “In terms of what a multipurpose space means, I don’t think we know that 100 percent today. We want it to be multipurpose, but we’re pretty early in the design process in terms of exactly what that is right now.”

T-R FILE PHOTO — Marshall County Sheriff Joel Phillips, right, speaks during a midterm Republican caucus at the Miller Middle School auditorium in 2022. The facility has played host to a wide variety of community events throughout its history.

Upon his return to Marshalltown in 2016, Schutte added, local leaders expressed a desire to upgrade and improve the auditorium, but although he was supportive of the idea, he wanted to be sure of Miller’s future as an educational institution before pouring millions of dollars into it.

“It really took this process to determine that that was the right direction to go,” he said.

After the Fisher Community Center, now known as the Marshalltown Arts and Civic Center (MACC) was badly damaged by the 2020 derecho, an audit was conducted to see how many performance venues were needed in the community. It was ultimately determined that a renovation of all of the available spaces, including the Miller auditorium, would be justified.

Another benefit of the Reimagine Miller project, Leeper said, is moving the commons area to the front of the building and offering a social gathering space for the public before and after events at the auditorium. And while the age of the facility does present its own set of challenges, it also means it has unique architectural features that would be difficult to replicate today.

Schutte also envisions the old auditorium lobby as a mini museum for the school district or a shrine to the late Jean Seberg or Mary Beth Hurt, the famed actresses who performed on the stage when Miller served as the high school.

“The auditorium is probably the most meaningful piece to the people that graduated from that building,” he said.

In some situations, Leeper noted, tearing down historic buildings and replacing them is a smarter option than renovating them, but Miller, with its location in proximity to the 70 percent of the students who live on the north side and its amenities that a typical middle school doesn’t have, made sense to salvage.

“It does have the ability to be adapted into a modern learning environment, and we believe that the bones of the building are solid for us to work with as we move forward in terms of the quality of the construction,” he said. “When we add all those things up together, in this case, it made sense to kind of keep the building, work with it and reimagine what education looks like here onsite.”

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.