Crews broke ground for the new Branham Amphitheater at Strawberry Park in late August, and while the project still has a long way to go, Stuart Handloff can already envision the day performers take the stage.

“If we can stand on the stage and we’re listening, or playing, or performing, and can say, ‘This works,’ then I will feel we really accomplished something,” said Handloff, executive director of Piknik Theatre, a nonprofit theater company in Steamboat Springs.

Handloff first introduced the idea of the amphitheater back in 2017 when he presented an idea to the Steamboat Springs Parks and Recreation commissioners to create a new community performance venue in Spring Creek Park.

That idea never became a reality, but Handloff was not ready to give up.

In 2021, he revisited the idea when he approached the Steamboat Springs School District and began a three-year quest raising money needed to build a new amphitheater on the Strawberry Park Elementary School campus. Work on that $650,000 project began in late-August and if the weather holds this fall it could be completed before the snow flies. Handloff said he was happy to see the work begin in August, but said he will not celebrate until the work is done and performers are on the stage.

“It’s not like it has been that much of a revelation,” Handloff said of the groundbreaking. “I call myself an artistic Roomba, because I bang into things, then turn away and find another direction until I bang into something else. I just keep banging around, looking for ways to get it done, and getting it done will come when the product is completed.”

Handloff said the excavation, concrete and steel are being handled by companies out of Moffat County — Luke Berlet with Berlet Roofing is contributing to the construction and Avery Dickens with Makeover Colorado is offering his general contracting services at a reduced rate. The final concrete pour is scheduled for next Tuesday and once completed, crews will move onto the steel, roofing and framing.

“If we get a late winter, we’ll probably get everything finished this year, but it may be spring of next year when everything is ready to roll,” Handloff said.

That product will include a nearly 1,000-square-foot covered performance stage, seating for up to 200 people — including fixed-bench seating for 100 people, an accessible area for wheelchairs that will hold 20 to 30 people, and an artificial-turf picnic area that can accommodate another 70 people.

Handloff said that the money to build the new amphitheater has been raised, but he said he is still working to raise money for a contingency fund, and possibly to do some work on an old school building that was relocated to the campus several years ago, which the school has offered for use as a prop-storage area and a green room where performers can prepare.

“It’s an all-acoustic facility, so there’s no provisions for stage lighting or amplification because of the acoustical design,” Handloff said. “There will be hard materials with the shell-like surfaces, and I feel comfortable that, according to our acoustic engineer, it’ll be suitable for children to be heard.”

Handoff is hoping to invite all the donors to the new amphitheater some time in June for a grand opening celebration. After that he hopes the venue will become an attraction for performing arts groups in the Yampa Valley, across the state, and perhaps even across the nation.

“My desire, my vision, is that we’ll be able to bring in performing arts groups from all over the region, if not from farther away,” Handloff said. “Whether it’s college theater groups, groups with master’s programs or professional groups from the Front Range … I’ve been talking with groups in the Roaring Fork, Aspen and Pitkin County valley, as well as Denver and Boulder, so I envision this as much as a performing arts facility as a Piknik Theatre venue.”

The Piknik Theatre has traditionally offered programming for a couple weeks each summer in the Yampa River Botanic Park, but the new Branham Amphitheater in Strawberry Park will allow the group to expand its programming. He said the school district will set the schedule during the school year, with Piknik Theatre taking the helm in the summer months. It will also be open to other community groups.

“I’ll spend a good deal of the winter promoting and seeing what else we can do. It is going to be a great facility for dance and music, as well as theater. All of those performing arts will, I think, find a welcome and exciting performing arts venue.”