After nine months of construction, Juneau’s largest event space reopens next month

Business | Juneau | Local Government

August 28, 2023 by Katie Anastas, KTOO

After nine months of renovations, Centennial Hall’s ballrooms now have brand new lighting, sound and heat systems.

“We are hitting the ground running,” said Kathleen Harper, the city-owned convention center’s house manager. “We are booked every single weekend through mid-December.”

Harper said Centennial Hall can fit about 500 people for banquet events. The next biggest space is Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall in the Andrew Hope Building, which can fit 400. The high schools can also fit large numbers of people, but they can’t serve alcohol.

For many event organizers, Harper said, this is the only space in town that meets their needs.

“We’re already starting to book things for 2024, 2025,” she said.

Centennial Hall closed in December for renovations. Juneau voters approved a $7 million bond to fund the project in 2019.

The renovated ballroom has new acoustic panels on the walls, meant to reduce sound reverberation. New moveable dividers, which can separate the large space into two or three smaller ones, slide easily along their tracks.

There are 90 new light fixtures and 53 new speakers.

“Each individual speaker, each individual theater lighting receptacle, can be controlled individually instead of as a big group,” said Eric Brewer, project manager for Alcan Electrical & Engineering.

And it can all be done from a laptop. Before, five to 10 people would have had to walk along the catwalk above the space and manually adjust the lights during events.

“It can even be pre-programmed so that you just push a start button and it’s all choreographed and automated, so the computer is doing it all,” Brewer said.

Each of the three ballrooms can now be heated or cooled separately. Six heat pumps do the work from a balcony on the side of the building.

“If someone is just renting one ballroom, we can just heat that ballroom or cool that one versus all three the same,” said Lisa EaganLagerquist, the city’s engineering project manager.

The new heating system isn’t the only sustainable aspect of the project. EaganLagerquist said the contractor, Carver Construction, kept about 80% of construction waste out of the landfill by reusing or recycling it. She hopes the city will continue to track those kinds of sustainability efforts in future projects.

“In Juneau, of course, we have a landfill that’s getting full,” she said. “We hope to continue that on CBJ projects – first, to just start tracking how much you’re diverting. If you don’t track it, you won’t improve.”

EaganLagerquist said she’s excited to have Juneau residents and event-goers hear the new sound system and see the new lights.

Board game convention Platypus Con will be the first public event held in the renovated space from Sept. 8 to 10. The eighth annual Glitz drag show will follow on Sept. 15 and 16.