CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — Wrapping the 2024 Cain Park concert season with a modern era record-breaking crowd, city officials continued to look upward at the original home to the arts — the Evans Amphitheater.
It wasn’t raining at the time, which made things easier as they turned to TEMA Roofing Services and the city’s pot of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money.
The $433,000 replacement project got underway last month on the pavilion roof added in 1989, just over 50 years after the amphitheater was built through the Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA).
That makes Cain Park the oldest municipally-owned and operated outdoor theater in the U.S., completed a few years ahead of Denver’s Red Rocks in 1941.
Officials noted both came along after Arlington (Va.) Memorial Amphitheater (1919), as well as the Hollywood Bowl (1922) and The Greek (1929) in Los Angeles.
“I like to call it the ‘Red Rocks of the Midwest,’” Cain Park General Manager Ian Hinz noted, referring to that other New Deal project, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps or “CCC.”
Production manager Scott Stanley said many of the musical artists scheduled to play at Cain Park are sleeping when they arrive at the local landmark.
“Then they wake up and say ‘where are we? What year is this?’” Stanley said.
They generally like what they see, with roughly half of the acts rebooked for future concerts in a historic venue that has been showing some signs of its age.
Upon subsequent returns, both performers and audiences will find a transformed facility, with more than $2 million in ARPA funds going toward refurbished dressing rooms and public restrooms, along with state-of-the-art audio, visual and lighting equipment.
And of course, there’s the restoration of a leaky roof that has been giving the staff fits for years.
“One of those leaking spots was over the stage monitors, putting thousands of dollars of sound equipment right underneath” at risk, Stanley said.
Another troublesome area was in the amphitheater’s “dimmer room,” the control room and power source that basically houses “all the electric stuff.”
“You hate to see water in a room with electricity,” Stanley said, recalling the time that rainwater runoff came a little too close for comfort to a $10,000 rented amplifier.
This summer was relatively dry, alleviating a lot of concerns.
“We were really lucky this year that the weather held out,” Hinz said.
But after the band My Morning Jacket set an attendance record of 2,750 at the last concert of the season on Oct. 4, “we already knew it was time for a tear-off” of the roof, Hinz said.
“Those ARPA funds can solve a lot of problems.”
Enter the Youngstown-based TEMA, a third-generation company owned and operated by the Froelich family.
Vice President Tommy Froelich III of Shaker Heights said the TEMA acronym comes from his parents’ given names: Thomas Edmund and Margaret Ann.
It was his mother who came up with the company’s motto: “Focused on Quality, Founded on Family.”
The crew of eight started by climbing up on the 50-foot rooftop to check the wood decking underneath the black protective covering, which also soaked up a lot of heat from the sun.
“We were up there, we felt it and it was soft in spots,” Froelich said.
He added there was also “a lot of movement in the roof, from freezing and thawing effects” over the years, pointing to the need to “catch anything before it fails.”
After the old top layer was removed, any rotting wood was replaced, with a white and highly reflective PVC membrane installed that will be more sustainable.
At the same time, it looked like a lot of “high-end materials” were used the first time around.
“A lot of my friends got excited when they heard about the project, because they’re also familiar with Cain Park,” Froelich said, adding that “the view alone is beautiful.”
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