FRIEND - A building that has stood in Southeast Nebraska since the late 19th Century will soon be receiving renovations to help it once again host performances and community events - just like it did a century ago.

The city of Friend and its historical society celebrated a major milestone Monday: the groundbreaking for phase one of a project to renovate and restore the city's longstanding Warren Building and Opera House.

"This project is all about partners. I think you all know it takes a village to raise our children, and it takes a village to manage a project like this," Mary Ann Losh, the president of the Friend Historical Society, said Monday. "We really have benefitted from all of you coming together to help get us to this point." 

"Being invited to every single activity gives me the opportunity to see where this town was built from," Friend mayor Judith "Jewels" Knoke said. "Seeing this building here, and seeing how much people care about this community, care about this building and wanting to revitalize it, means that’s important to me, but it’s also important to our city and our community, to enrich that history and keep it going for our children moving forward."

"What you’re going to be able to start to see here is a beginning. We’ve thought about beginning for a while, and the committee and the board have worked extremely hard to set the path and set the footing for this, and we’re finally ready to break ground," said Kevin Clark, the project's principal architect. "From an architect’s standpoint, it doesn’t get much more exciting than this. Over the next few weeks, you’re  going to start to see the future of the Friend Opera House be possible. Because up until this point, we were just dreaming. And this step is going to begin to make it real."

This particular building has been a staple of the Friend community since it was built in 1885-86, and this renovation project - funded through $400,000 from Community Development Block Grant funding acquired through the Nebraska Department of Economic Development and the Southeast Nebraska Development District, plus a $100,000 match from the community - is designed to help this building remain a fixture in Friend long into the future.

"In small communities, we have things that matter to us, our history being one of them. Friend has always focused on its history, because that’s our foundation," Knoke said. "Without a foundation, you don’t really have anything to build on. So when we can show the youth in our community the importance of history, they keep it moving forward, long after we’re gone."

One of the core tenets of this project is accessibility, so one of phase one's first steps will be to install more accessible entrances all around the building's exterior. Losh acknowledged that for years the society has heard from Friend residents that they really want - and need - an elevator in the building, but since it won't be physically possible to install an elevator inside the building itself, there will be an external elevator erected, which will help builders and the public gain access to the ground floor and, eventually, the floors above.

And on those upper floors is the centerpiece of this historic building: the opera house itself. The space has been dormant for decades, but there are signs all across the stage and surrounding rooms of how well-used it was a century in the past, such as dates of previous performances held there in the 1920s.

The historical society was gifted the building in 2008 by the Yokel family with the express desire to see the opera house restored to its former glory, and they believe that once people are able to see what this space was capable of in the past, they'll believe in what it can become in the present and the future of Friend.

"I’d say that between Lincoln and Minden, this will be the nicest reception space available, and we’ll be able to seat 200-300 people," Clark said. "We’re going to have a beautiful pre- and post-function space. This is going to be a beautiful reception space, that’s not really paralleled close by. The goal here is that this will become an anchor – just like it was in the 1900s to this community. This is the first step to bring that anchor back to Friend."