Can we save Nashua’s Keefe Auditorium?
Sometimes, nostalgia may not be enough.
Mayor Jim Donchess recently appointed another well-qualified individual to the Keefe Auditorium Commission. Joe Olefirowicz joins members Alicia Gregg, Carl Dubois, Dan O’Donnell, Dennis Schneider and Julia Oliver-Barb. The commission will develop a plan “to upkeep and renovate the auditorium such that it could stand alone.” This shall include “the development of a design, capital campaign, and funding recommendations.”
The Keefe Auditorium may be antiquated, but it has “great bones” and an orchestra pit, is ideally located downtown and happens to be the largest auditorium in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, the iconic performance venue is physically attached to the now-closed Elm Street Middle School building.
The mayor and Board of Aldermen will let voters make their voices heard on the auditorium’s possible fate in a nonbinding ballot question during the municipal election on Nov. 4:
“Elm Street Middle School is being redeveloped for new affordable and market-rate housing. The Keefe Auditorium is part of the Elm Street Middle School. To enable the Keefe Auditorium to continue to be used for performances, the City must spend approximately $25 million for a code-required heating system, bathrooms and fire protection with no new additional enhancements. Alternatively, the City could allow the Keefe Auditorium to be replaced by more housing and/or by green space.
“Should the City spend approximately $25 million to meet code requirements and keep the Keefe Auditorium open?”
That’s the multimillion-dollar question.
Olefirowicz has an impressive background. He’s the music director at The First Church here and has also been a freelance conductor and concert artist locally and abroad in all genres of music. Olefirowicz is also a trained theatrical lighting designer and has done orchestra pit design.
It won’t be easy to preserve the auditorium, he says. “It’s an uphill battle because the public’s perception of putting more money into the arts is a strong, opinionated subject.”
Olefirowicz has good advice in that citizens should be thinking how we’d “use the auditorium for the next 40 to 50 years… The building alone, just its footprint, can’t be the only thing that happens to the space to make it viable for the city.”
“I was the former acting principal keyboard of Symphony New Hampshire,” Olefirowicz says. “I played in the Keefe quite often and am very fond of the space.”
Many Nashuans are sentimental about Elm Street school (1937) and its auditorium. Thousands of students and many teachers walked through those hallowed halls; one of them was Ronald N. Dube. “I graduated from Nashua High on Elm St. in 1960. I taught biology there from 1970 to 1976 on double sessions, then at the new Nashua High, before it became NHS South, until 1979. Then I went to North Middlesex Regional High School until they transferred me to the middle school in Pepperell in the same district. ”
These days, Ron has written two more books, now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. His autobiography is titled “Ramblings of a Dexter Street Doodler.” The book features “a long history of the French immigration to Canada and then to cities like Nashua and Lowell. My family history is part of this. I remember stories from my grandmothers and did my own research.”
“Ammonite Ridge” is Ron’s sci-fi novel. “The book is about a paleontologist on a quest to explore and collect from a site in a faraway place. There are lots of adventures, troubles, etc., along the way.”
Double congratulations, Ron!
Joan T. Stylianos
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