Mike Warner, an architecture major at Kansas University, never thought he’d spend so much time thinking about opera.

But this semester, he’s come to the conclusion that building an opera house — which could double as a venue for music theater and other performances — could be the key for keeping downtown Lawrence vibrant.

“Lawrence has such a great musical culture, and we have some great venues, but they’re almost all in a bar setting downtown,” Warner said. “I think it would attract a lot of people to Lawrence and downtown.”

Warner, who is from Overland Park, and 30 fellow fourth-year architecture students have spent the spring semester designing an opera house during a course team-taught by Stephen Grabow and Wojciech Lesnikowski.

Among the opera house’s parameters:

• The 1,200-seat hall had to be built in the 600 block between Tennessee and Vermont streets, where the post office and other buildings are now.
• It had to be “transparent” at night by having glass outer walls.
• It had to include a 300-car parking garage and plaza.


Natha Rosemann and Maggie Richter, both fourth-year architecture students at Kansas University, created this concept for an opera house in downtown Lawrence. A class project led by faculty members Stephen Grabow and Wojciech Lesnikowski resulted in several models that would hypothetically be built at the present location of the post office, 645 Vt. The city is not considering an opera house for the area.

The results, to be unveiled during a presentation at 6 tonight in Marvin Hall, were a far cry from the traditional European opera houses. The 15 futuristic designs are highly detailed, down to the placement of the auditorium seats and the acoustic panels.

“There is incredible detail in this,” Grabow said. “They’re really gotten into this project.”

Though no group has proposed an opera house in Lawrence, Grabow said he thought the city could support another venue such as the ones students are designing. He admitted, however, building an opera house in downtown Lawrence would take some vision.

“I’ve always had the belief that all great cities were once small towns,” he said. “The things that turn small towns into a city are things like building an opera house.”

Will Spurzem, of Omaha, and Brian Durban, of St. Louis, said they hadn’t thought much about opera before teaming up for the project. But they said they thought the house would fit in nicely downtown and would serve as a cultural center for the city.

Kansas University students Mike Britt and Elliott Voth created this concept for an opera house in downtown Lawrence.

“It would bring a lot more focus to Lawrence in general,” Durban said. “We’d get a lot more traffic from Kansas City.”

“Lawrence seems to lack iconic places, other than campus,” Spurzem said.

Ann Evans, director of the Lawrence Arts Center, said she was intrigued by the proposal. She said the opera house would have to find a niche not currently filled by the Lied Center, Liberty Hall and other venues.

“I think it’s a fun thought,” she said. “It could potentially have a lot of use.”

She commended the students for trying to incorporate modern architecture into their plans for the opera house instead of simply mimicking existing downtown architecture.

“If you’re going to build a modern art building nowadays, it’d better be contemporary,” she said. “It just needs to be.”