The Peabody Opera House, a centerpiece of downtown St. Louis since 1934 for theater and performing arts, has been revitalized and InterAmerica Stage was excited to be a part of the renovations in such a historical venue.

The Opera House features six venues, including an ornate main theatre with approximately 3,500 seats and a two-story front, four small side theaters or halls (with a capacity of up to 700 seats each), an exposition hall, basement restaurant/bar space, offices, dressing rooms and other support spaces for the facility. During its height of activity, the Opera House attracted the world's finest performers, including concert artists, Broadway shows, plays, dance companies, symphonies, blues, jazz, country-western, rock, grand opera and light opera. It also presented several Veiled Prophet balls, choral pageants, civic events and traveling exhibits. Perhaps the most historically significant event to ever take place was a speech by President Harry S. Truman on October 30, 1948. The nationally-broadcast speech was the last on his whistle-stop campaign tour to win re-election of the Presidency. The Opera House was closed on May 7, 1991. After numerous attempts by various parties over nearly two decades to reopen the building, financing was completed in June 2010 to pave the way to renovate and reopen the Opera House. Today, it is known as the Peabody Opera House, thanks to a naming rights partnership with Peabody Energy. The grand opening was Fall of 2011.

IAStage installed a new LiftDeck control system with new motor/gearbox/brake, new limits, safety edges, door interlocks and railing interlocks. IAStage’s General Manager and on-site supervisor for this project, John Gitzy, states “Since this was such an historic renovation, I decided to handle this installation personally. We were tasked with upgrading an 80 year old Peter Clark screw driven lift to modern load and safety standards, but asked to preserve as much of the original technology as possible. By lowering the lift speed and upgrading the motor and main gear-boxes, we were able to achieve 75 psf live load and 125 psf sustaining load without changing the original Peter Clark manufactured screw jacks. It’s amazing, but when we performed the wear checks on the screws, the wear on the drive nuts was almost zero. The project included adding modern door and railing interlocks as well as integrating Tapeswitch astragal tapes to protect all the shear edges in the system. The LiftDeck controller with the upgraded touch screen interface worked flawlessly. The interface screens give positive indication of all safety systems as well as position indication and other fault monitoring, it really makes the system easy for the end user to trouble-shoot when a safety system has been compromised. The final results worked perfectly for both the consultant and the owner without going over their budget."