Arbogast Performing Arts Center
A Butler® hybrid building brings the arts to life, delivering engineered performance, architectural presence and a space designed to serve an area school and the community for generations.
Project
Overview
A vision that began taking shape in the 1980s has become a defining cultural destination for a community in Ohio.
Arbogast Performing Arts Center now serves the region as a place where education and the arts converge.
Brentwood Builders, a full-service design-build and construction management firm serving the community since 1979, strengthened its capabilities even further after becoming a Butler Builder® in 2016. That affiliation ultimately positioned Brentwood to deliver a facility with the scale and permanence required for a project decades in the making.
Brentwood Builders provided a Butler® building that supports both the student body and the broader community. The result is a 39,000-square-foot structure with a modern, industrial aesthetic that invites guests to experience a diverse range of performances. Concerts, authors, speakers, dance recitals, comedians and magicians have all taken the stage.
Chad Coe, Vice President of Business Development for Brentwood Builders, has attended events since the center’s completion.
“I was blown away by the space. There’s no bad seat in the house,” he said.
Beyond the 1,200-seat auditorium and expansive 75-foot by 50-foot stage, the building includes first- and second-floor lobbies designed for flexible use, an art gallery, conference and office spaces, eight restrooms, a café and performer amenities including a shower, dressing room and laundry room.
The design reflects a hybrid solution of conventional steel construction and pre-engineered metal building, made with Butler Manufacturing™ systems chosen for their lasting performance.
The MR-24® roof system, the industry’s first and finest standing-seam metal roof, provides the weathertight protection and long-term reliability essential for a facility of this prominence. Butler’s hybrid approach delivered the assurance that APAC’s owners needed, giving them confidence that the structure would endure and that Brentwood Builders had full capability to execute such a signature project.
The strength and precision of the building did not go unnoticed. At the 53rd annual Metal Building Contractors and Erectors Association (MBCEA) conference in 2022, the Arbogast Performing Arts Center received the Building of the Year award, further validating the engineering quality behind the project.
The center has since become a catalyst for community pride, cultural enrichment and economic impact. Brentwood Builders’ use of Butler systems created a structure unlike any other on the campus, one that will serve residents for generations.
“If there’s anything I want people to take away from this project, it’s that this is truly a space for the community,” Coe said.
