I have been sitting on this for a few days in order to not blow your head off here. However, even after sitting for a few days I still believe that this is the worst idea you could possibly have. With this move you are totally locking the space into an arrangement that simply does not work for the
current economy.
I am not a fan of venues in general with
trap room storage that is only accessible with a pit elevator. It locks you into only being able to move stuff when the pit is
clear... and we all know that the second you have to move something is 5 minutes after you pinned up the pit. However, having a
trap room that is only accesable by pulling in motors from the
grid AND requires a
clear stage might just make it the worst arrangement possible.
Point blank, if you do this within 5 years you will not be storing a single thing in that
trap room. Unless you have alternative storage spaces you might as well just scrap this whole plan.
In the
current economy, labor numbers are needing to get smaller for every show. If you take a move that was as simple at "take the pit down, pushing something on, take the pit up", to "
clear the
deck, pull pit plugs, rig gear to fly, fly gear, put pit covers back". That added a day to your
call. That made your space less flexible. It made doing a show more expensive for the
venue and your clients. Even if you have student labor, you are still taking a full day to do something that used to take 10 minutes... and every day you are spending moveing these plugs is a day butts are not in the seats.
You also have to remember that you are not the only person that will ever run this place. Personally, if I walked in to your space as a new TD and was told what the process is for getting gear in and out of the
trap room I would laugh and then never use that storage space. Anything down there I would consider dead to the world. I would then be REALLY mad at the last guy who had the pit removed in order to save a few hundred thousand. Finally, I would be hacked if I had a grand piano but it could not come out of the pit. You are then locked into renting a piano anytime an artist wants to use one onstage.
SPEND the money now. Do the project right. Get better pumps. Get an override timer to turn the pumps off just for shows (one of those 5 hour spin timers works great for this). You will spend way more than 300k in labor/
venue time over the next 5 years dealing with this situation. I also doubt that this reconfiguration will save you any money. Getting the pit covers is nice. Push for that. However, your solution is kind of like taking the engine out of a car and replacing it with a wound up rubber band. Don't assume you will be there forever. Also, don't assume that what you are doing in the
theatre now is what the place will be doing forever.
Finally, on the piano thing, odds are you are knocking the piano more out of tune by moving it from room to room then on the gap. Fast changes in temperature and humidity can do more damage to a tuning than anything else. I would also suggest you get a
spider dolly for your piano that has large casters. I move both our Steinway's between our two spaces in a freight elevator wtih about an inch and a half gap and have never had major issues with tuning. I always try to move them to the
venue they will be used in at lest 24 hours before the event. We also tune before every event, which you should be doing anyway.
