October 11, 2022

Hoover City Schools leaders have broken ground for the $15.4M Performing Arts Center at Hoover High School.

Dozens of people, including Hoover City Schools leaders, city leaders, and Hoover High School students and staff, gathered for the special occasion to witness the groundbreaking of the 36,000-square-foot facility. Forty-seven percent of Hoover High School students are involved in some kind of fine arts, and the current theatre isn’t large enough to accommodate the students’ performances.

“The community is excited about it, and our students are excited. This is something they’ve needed for a long time. Our kids are great performers. They win national and state competitions, but they don’t have a place here to perform, so for us to have a first-class facility for them to perform in for the community is going to be such a blessing,” said Hoover High School Principal John Montgomery.

Dalton Dismukes, a performing arts student, said, “To be able to have this Performing Arts Center to show off our hard work and our talent is such a gift. We’ve had to perform our band concerts in gyms, we’ve had to find churches that would allow us to use their space to perform concerts, and now to have a center specifically for these performances will be such a wonderful opportunity.”

The new facility will be added to the existing HHS band room, and a hallway will connect the band room to the Performing Arts Center. The center will include 940 seats, space for an orchestra pit, a full theatrical lighting and sound package, a full fly curtain loft, an on-site scene construction workshop located directly behind the stage, and a fully automated electrics rigging system, among other features. 

Blalock Building Company anticipates 16 to 17 months to complete the project once construction begins.