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The Videos
"Revolutionizing Historic Preservation," our current video debut, features Wealthy Theatre Director Erin Wilson explaining what led Community Media Center to imagine the Sustainability Campaign, why it's important and how you can help.
"WT Before & After," released a year ago, has received nearly 3,000 views on our Vimeo channel - this video features a series of breathtaking transitions from the old to the new.
If you know a business or foundation leader who might be able to help us reach our goal, please share these videos far and wide!
We can be contacted at info@wealthytheatre.org or by calling (616) 459-4788 x130. Office hours are weekdays 2-7 p.m. at 1130 Wealthy Street, Grand Rapids, MI 49506.
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THE FEED
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/Jon Clay
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Community Media Center (CMC) proudly debuts a new video about Wealthy Theatre's pioneering Centennial Sustainability Campaign, which has a fundraising goal of $500,000. We're halfway there and we need your help. Please share this article, and visit the WT Centennial website to learn how you can help.
As you may know, the Wealthy Theatre Centennial Sustainability Campaign addresses emerging threats to the sustainability of this beloved Grand Rapids landmark. Wealthy Theatre is confronted with the same threats as almost every historic venue in North America: rising energy costs, cultural irrelevancy and outdated technologies. Community Media Center (CMC) has designed a groundbreaking 30-point plan to address and overcome these threats.
We chose to celebrate our 100-year anniversary by looking forward, to preserve the past by embracing the future. The Sustainability Plan is our blueprint for survival, but not just for Wealthy Theatre. The Sustainability Plan is a revolutionary approach to historic preservation, which leverages greening technologies while meticulously honoring historic traditions.
The individual pieces of the Sustainability Plan work in concert with one another: containment measures to reduce wasted energy, renewable energy to replace fossil-fuel energies and multimedia updates to maintain a high volume of usage by the community.
One highlight is the plan to replace all lights in Wealthy Theatre with LED technology, including the stage lights in Peter Wege Auditorium, which would reduce energy draw for lighting by nearly 80 percent. Nothing like this ever has been done before, or even attempted. In addition we'd place solar panels on the roof, install secondary doors in the main lobby, create a loading dock enclosure, add efficiency hardware to our furnace, upgrade our projector and video cameras and beautify the parking lot and walkway.
Historic venues are essentially cavernous structures that take a ton of energy to operate. Wealthy Theatre's Sustainability Campaign would position this city landmark as a national model for innovative approaches to unavoidable problems - a teaching hospital, if you will, for other historic venues.
We're only halfway to our modest goal of $500,000 and we need your help. Please share this article in any way you can - by private email and on Facebook and Twitter.
Wealthy Theatre is a proud service of Community Media Center (CMC).
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