Edmonton, Alberta

Roxy Theatre

On January 13, 2015, Edmonton’s Roxy Theatre burned to the ground. The venue, built in 1938, was a cornerstone of the performing arts community and a historic city landmark — its iconic yellow sign visible for blocks down 124th Street. Almost seven years later, on the same hallowed ground, a new theatre is ready to open.

This is the new Roxy.

Robert Prybysh and Kevin Mattai of Arrow Engineering, overseeing the mechanical and electrical engineering of the project respectively, were charged with helping resurrect the Roxy as a contemporary theatre without compromising its long-standing heritage.

“It’s a fully modern, up-to-spec building while hopefully having that classical feel of the old theatre,” explains Robert. “It’s a key lynchpin of the local community and has been for decades on decades, but now as a new, modern, state-of-the-art building.”

Erecting the new structure in the exact spot where the old theatre resided was no simple task. Inside, the new space contains two full theatres and a rehearsal area. Outside, the theatre faces a bustling arterial street and backs onto a cramped alleyway. With pedestrians and rush hour traffic passing the jobsite daily, the safety of both workers and the streetside public was paramount. Luckily, as members of APEGA, Alberta’s regulator of the engineering and geoscience professions, safety was always top-of-mind for the Arrow Engineering team. Even if on-site construction was tight.

“It’s not a big space to be able to work with, and we knew there would be challenges in just locating everything in what is essentially a postage stamp-sized site,” explains Robert.

The theatre’s transformer, oversized and boxy due to the venue’s significant electrical needs, had to be elevated on a bed of rock to accommodate the required subterranean grounding rods. The theatre’s wiring, sprawling up from the basement electrical room, had to be routed underneath seating so as to not encroach on performance space. And in theatre, the performance rules all.

“The acoustics are key. It’s not a big building — we can’t put noise generating equipment at the opposite end of the building to get separation. It’s just not feasible.” says Robert.

Mitigating any ambient noise within the theatre was a priority. All of the theatre’s air handling equipment was relegated to the roof. The heating system, including the boiler, had to be precisely tuned to not be heard next to the adjacent auditorium. According to Kevin, even the transformers and electrical wiring had to be carefully arrayed so as to reduce any audible scene-ruining frequencies.

“With audio, you have issues with harmonics and you need to allow for dedicated wiring because you can get resonance and feedback.” says Kevin.

All of this amounts to a theatre so well-crafted and well-appointed that you’ll be forgiven for thinking it’s lost any of its erstwhile charm. That is until you see the new illuminated sign—bright and yellow—ready to shine again along 124th Street for generations to come. (You can thank Kevin for that, too.)