Volunteers And The Loew's Jersey Theatre
Vital Partners In The Ultimate Home Restoration Project |
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 The
restoration of the Loew's Jersey Theatre is a huge undertaking,
dwarfing in scale the work most home renovators will ever have
to deal with. All renovation projects are part inspiration, part
desperation and a good part perspiration. And there are many
aspects of the Loew's project that will be familiar and interesting
to anyone who works around their house.
The Loew's project has an extremely tight budget. To save money,
we use volunteers to do an extraordinary number of repair jobs.
To date, we've accomplished over $1,000,000 worth of work with
our in-house forces. In doing this, we stretch our limited funding
very far, allowing us to use the money they saved, giving us
the money to hire contractors to take care of the biggest, most
complicated jobs -- such as the installation of new boilers and
an electric service, exterior masonry restoration and re-roofing.
 To
succeed, we've had to create a virtual construction company of
our own, staffed by volunteers. These volunteers include construction
professionals who donate their time. But the bulk of our volunteers
come to us with only limited "fixer-upper" experience and learn
along the way. One of our key volunteers, a young woman, told
us that before working here the most exotic construction work
she'd ever done was hammering nails into a wall to hang pictures.
Working with us, she's climbed scaffolding to disassemble walls,
helped rebuild our marquee, poured concrete and much more.
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