New Five–Screen Movie Theater Coming to 53rd Street

posted by chicago pop

Well how about that. Sorry, all you 5th Ward Hairston voters, but the 4th Ward is really where it's at. We won't object to you coming north to spend your money.

From the University of Chicago:

The University of Chicago plans to bring The New 400 Theaters, an independent movie operator that will offer a mix of art, children’s and wide–release films, in the soon–to–be renovated buildings at 53rd Street and Harper Avenue.

Officials said the 10,149–square–foot theater plan includes five screens with state–of–the–art digital projection. One screening room will have tables placed between the seats for future lunch and dinner options.

The New 400 Theaters plans to discount tickets for students, seniors and children. General–admission seating will be below market prices, said theater officials.

“We believe students, faculty, staff and our neighbors will be very excited about having a new movie theater within walking distance,” said Kimberly Goff–Crews, Vice President for Campus Life. “As we talk to members of our community about how to enhance campus life, this is one of the ideas that comes up frequently.”

The agreement with The New 400 Theaters is part of a broader effort to revitalize the 53rd Street corridor as a focus of commercial, retail and entertainment activity.

Last month, the University unveiled plans to begin a major renovation of the commercial and theater buildings at 53rd Street and Harper Avenue, which are currently vacant. Five Guys restaurant, scheduled to open by year’s end, will be the first tenant. Additional tenants will be announced in the upcoming months. The University is also partnering with the City and community leaders to lead an ambitious redevelopment of the adjacent Harper Court property as a mixed–use complex.

“The theater, along with other strategic revitalization efforts, will bring added value to the area. It is one more piece of our ongoing conversations with the City and the neighborhood to build Hyde Park as a key destination on the South Side of Chicago,” said Susan Campbell, Associate Vice President of Civic Engagement.

The New 400 Theaters opened its first venue in Rogers Park in July 2009. That site, built in 1912 near Loyola University and formerly known as Village North, is one of the oldest continuously operating movie theaters in the country. Tony Fox, owner and operator of The New 400 Theaters, said the Hyde Park location was ideal due to its close proximity to the campus and the overall commitment from the community to upkeep its neighborhood.

“We are proud to bring our theater to Hyde Park, a place where people really care about their community,” said Fox. “My passion is community service, and we hope to continue in the same tradition as we have done in Rogers Park — to bring safe, reliable and sound entertainment to the area.”

Fox said his business partner, Tom Klein, will serve as general manager in Hyde Park. Klein is also the general manager for The New 400 Theaters in Rogers Park. He said they are interested in talking with Doc Films, the University student group that screens diverse films each quarter for students, faculty, staff and the community, to see if there are potential partnerships that could work in the new theater model.

The movie theater has a targeted opening date of fall 2012.

Newsflash: U of C to Begin Renovation of 53rd St. Buildings, New Tenants Announced

posted by chicago pop

For immediate release: January 10, 2011

University announces renovation of 53rd Street buildings

University officials announced at the Jan. 10 meeting of the 53rd Street TIF Council that the University will undertake a major renovation of the theater and office buildings at 53rd Street and Harper Avenue.

Work will begin Thursday on the adaptive reuse project slated for completion this fall, which will provide a home for new restaurant, retail and other tenants. University officials told the TIF Council that they expect to provide news about those tenants in coming weeks and months.

“The University has an interest in saving these buildings,” said Ann Marie Lipinski, Vice President for Civic Engagement. “We believe they are a key piece of our shared efforts with the city to revitalize this important Hyde Park corridor.” The University has owned the 13,000 square-foot office building at 1452-1456 E. 53rd St. since 2003. OKW Architects of Chicago will serve as the lead architect on the renovation of that building, while HSA Commercial Real Estate, a national, full-service real estate firm, will serve as the property manager.

The project scope includes façade work, tuck-pointing and a complete rehabilitation of the interior to make appropriate space for the new tenants and enhance its overall character. Other plans include new windows, signage and outdoor seating capabilities.

University officials said the refurbished office building, which has been vacant for seven years, will generate considerable interest among commercial tenants. The ground floor and second floor each occupy approximately 5,000 square feet. Restaurants and retail operations are planned for the ground floor and the second floor will have multiple uses, including potential office space.

The University also owns the former theater building, which is slated for upgrades in the latter part of the year. Officials said more information on the renovation project for that building would be available by spring.

Open Rehearsal: New Court Theater Blog

posted by chicago pop

There's yet another neighborhood blog up and running, and this one is pretty interesting. Court Theater's Open Rehearsal began less than a month ago (August 12, at 11:40 AM) but it's already clear that it's got a lot of love to share with Hyde Park. How could it not, given the Court's longstanding history in the neighborhood?

There are shout-outs to local goings on that theater-goers and literary types might appreciate, like readings at 57th Street books, and the weekly, Wednesday "Dean's Men (the University's resident Shakespear troupe) [which] holds court over "Shakes and Shakespear." Grab a $1 milkshake from the C-Shop and see a free Shakespear performance on Bartlett Quad at high noon. UChiBLOGo has the story." (And that's another new blog, by the way; we'll get to it next).

Open Rehearsal is dedicated primarily to theater rehearsals, which are as fascinating as any behind-the-scenes dish on a big production, but along the way you find all sorts of little nuggets that HPP readers might savor, such as this flyer from the days ca. 1963 when the Court "was an outdoor festival in Hutch Courtyard on the university campus."


On the back of which is to be found the following advert:

Popular Food, Unusual Prices?

And guaranteed to win our affection here at HPP, Open Rehearsal is willing to throw in its 2 cents on the occasional theater-related development issue. Here's what it has to say on the question, first raised by HPP's Elizabeth Fama, of whether the old Harper Theater at 53rd and Harper is historically significant:

Hyde Park Progress rightfully asks, is Harper Theater really historically significant? However, you can always count on the Regenstein Library’s Special Collections Research Center to have something, and indeed they do: this playbill from the very first Harper Theater production, Pirandello’s Enrico IV.

The playbill gives a brief but utterly bizarre history of the theater:

The Harper Theater was built in 1914 as a vaudeville house. The architects were H.R. Wilson and Company. The theater originally had 1200 seats. The balcony has been closed off and the coffee house built in the rear of the main floor.

The lobby and entrance were remodeled in the 1930’s, changing the entrance from 53rd Street to Harper Avenue. The Harper closed as a movie house in 1956 [!]. The rear half of the main floor, (under the balcony), was walled off in 1964 to create a coffee house.

The lights over the lobby counter were the original store lights for Finnegan’s drug store.

Fixtures in the coffee house are from Finnegan’s drug store, formerly located at 55th Street and Woodlawn Avenue. The fixtures were built in Boston in 1911 and then shipped to Chicago and installed in the drug store where they remained until being moved to the Harper last year.

The grill work in the lobby and coffee shop is from the fire escapes of the Hyde Park Hotel, 51st and Lake Park Avenue. The French marble of the counters came from a Fred Harvey restaurant at Canal and Madison Streets. The lobby’s stained glass windows are from a Dorchester Avenue home in Hyde Park demolished by Urban Renewal.

The chandeliers in the theater are believed to be original and were electrically rebuilt and rehung. (p. 134)

You can't be too hard on drama people (and I have been, at times, one of them) for having a soft-spot for theaters. It would certainly be nice to keep the old building if possible, but at least Open Rehearsal took a few minutes to go dig up some documents to attempt firm up Harper Theater's historical bona fides.

In any case, I like their plan for a renovated Court Theater of the future. Be sure to check it out.

Harper Theater: Historically Significant?

posted by Elizabeth Fama

In the last few days, HPP reader "BWChicago" brought up the issue of the historic significance of the Hyde Park Movie Theater (see the comments on Chicago Pop's previous post). He mentioned that the Joffrey Ballet and Second City played there when it was called Harper Theater. He was the first person I've heard articulate reasons he thought the building had some historic merit, and it raised the level of the discussion in the comment section about demolition versus restoration.

San Nicola in Carcere, Rome

I really admire old objects and art, but I'm not a zealous preservationist yet. For instance, one of my favorite buildings in Rome is San Nicola in Carcere, which was built in the 6th Century on the ruins of three ancient temples, using the columns of the temples for one of its walls. It also has a jutting medieval prison tower (back from its days as a jail), and a 19th Century facade stuck on the front. Until the recent tourism era, Italians thought nothing of tearing down and rebuilding to suit current tastes and egos, or heck, just building sopra (on top of). I'm not sure that's such a bad model.

For an average person like me, then, a building in Hyde Park can have historic significance because (a) experts agree it's important architecturally, or (b) something important happened there, or (c) both. With regard to (a) BWChicago argued that the theater is probably nicer than any new structure that will be built there, which time will tell. With regard to (b), there was that Joffrey Ballet and Second City information he provided.

I did some cyber research on Harper Theater, and this is what I could find about its significance:

1) It was built as a vaudeville theater in 1913. (Vaudeville is cool.)

2) In 1995 the City of Chicago finished a 12-year inventory of all structures built before 1940 (the Chicago Historic Resources Survey). Even my house was evaluated (it's "too altered for architectural or historical significance," humph). Harper Theater is one of 9,600 properties listed as "orange" in their ranking system, meaning "possesses potentially significant architectural or historical features."

3) Landmarks Illinois -- which is a private (not state-run) preservation organization -- listed the theater on its 2008-2009 watch-list of endangered properties, after the University's deal with a developer fell through.

4) Bruce Sagan (publisher of the Hyde Park Herald) and his wife, Judith, bought the theater in 1964 to host the annual "Harper Theater Dance Festival." In November of 1965, the Joffrey Ballet -- which a year before had been forced to disband (for contractual reasons) -- staged a one-week comeback at Harper Theater with new dancers and new choreography, putting the corps back on the national radar. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater also participated in the Festival at some point.

From the Newberry Library's Inventory of Judith and Bruce Sagan Papers, 1965-1986:

Founders of the Harper Theater Dance Festival, Bruce and Judith Sagan met while students at the University of Chicago. Bruce Sagan, a publisher of local newspapers, bought the Harper Theater business block in Hyde Park and in 1964 he and Judith renovated the theater in order to present a cross-section of top dance companies, some of them new to Chicago audiences. The festivals provided a full week of performance opportunities at a time when most touring companies were subjected to one-and two-night stands while on the road. Although including both ethnic and classic dance at the beginning, the festivals soon specialized as a showcase for the best contemporary and experimental dance companies in the country, such as Merce Cunningham, Alwin Nikolais and Paul Taylor.

By the third season, Bruce Sagan gave up his active involvement in the dance festivals and Judith Sagan became sole producer. In 1971 the festival, now the Harper Dance Foundation, moved to downtown Chicago to the Civic Theater and then to the University of Chicago's Mandel Hall between 1971 and 1975. After 1975, the foundation became dormant, but was reactivated in 1979 to bring the Paul Taylor Dancers back to the Civic Theater.

5) BWChicago also stresses the fact that Second City played at Harper Theater, but the only reference I could find was relatively insignificant, in an obituary about Byrne Pivens:

Married in 1954, the Pivens left Chicago in 1955 to work and study in New York, but they returned here in 1967 to appear in the short-lived Second City Repertory Company at the old Harper Theater in Hyde Park.

In fact, the two true ancestor groups of Second City -- Playwrights Theater Club and subsequently The Compass Players -- played in bars on 55th Street (University Tap and Compass Tavern) that both fell to urban renewal. The Bee Hive, a highly influential jazz club, was also razed (among other music venues).

So while we debate the significance of Hyde Park Movie Theater, I say that we also dig up the foundations of those bars and clubs on 55th, and -- like Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome -- we build new taverns and a nightlife right on top of them. What better way to honor the past?

NIMBY's Corner: Morsbach Keeps Apologizing; Spicer Makes Up More Stuff

posted by chicago pop

If anyone wonders why the same names keep popping up again and again on this blog, there's a simple reason: the same few names keep out-gassing in the Herald like crabby spouses, or mucking around elsewhere leaving monkey wrenches conspicuously dangling about.

It's sort of like Blagojevich: we didn't ask for his behavior, but he just keeps doing crazy stuff and getting media attention for it.

So, to come back to our long-time HPP favorite, the Janus-faced Hans Morsbach, defender of the neighborhood and of high principles.

If ever there has been reason to quote Shakespeare on the blog, it is with reference to his latest letter on the Doctors Hospital vote -- in which he defends -- one more time -- his position. Note to Hans: me thinks thou dost protest too much.

Yes, it's been over a month, and Hans is still apologizing for the dumb decision he encouraged his neighbors to take and that most of the rest of the neighborhood is ticked off about. If it really had been the right thing to do, I don't think we would have had this blizzard of propaganda in the aftermath.

Taking the best interests of the neighborhood to heart, Morsbach issues this rejoinder to White Lodging's Bruce White:

I did not know of the extent of your philanthropic intentions and how they affect me. Do you
suggest that knowing that the University Medical Center receives a large donation will make a bigger impact on my life than looking every day at an ugly building, or give you license to tear down a landmark? ... Do you think that when your employees park on Harper Avenue that I think that is the cost of progress?

[Emphasis on personal pronouns added by the editor.]

So Hans is clearly not concerned about himself, and this comes through, as it also came through the referendum.

To satisfy the literary critics among us, I'll point out that it's unclear what "ugly building" Morsbach is referring to, as the Doctors Hospital is certainly no beauty, something which Morsbach himself confessed in an earlier letter in the summer of 2007. ("I have never paid much attention to the architectural merit of the hospital..." Herald LTE, July 18, 2007).

And of course, Doctors Hospital does not have landmark status, as Morsbach claims. But when you're out-gassing to the Herald, little details like that tend to escape out the blowhole.




On the note of factual inaccuracy, especially with regard to claims of things not falling apart and it just generally being OK that entropy and the second law of thermodynamics have become the governing principles of Hyde Park development, Mr. Jack Spicer makes the claim in today's Herald that the troubled Herald Building on 53rd and Harper is "a very solid building and in very good condition." ("HPHS seeks landmark status for 53rd and Harper," Kate Hawley, Herald, Wednesday December 10, 2008).

Now, the Herald Building that fronts 53rd has been vacant since spring of 2008, but even before that we have it from a variety of sources that it was falling apart.

For example, we learn from the October 11, 2006 Herald, that the company once interested in renovating the Harper Theater ran up against the problem of the building's advanced deterioration and the costs that fixing it would have entailed.

The building and its interior also need extensive repair and renovation," [the Herald told us, going on to quote the local art house theater chain Classic Cinemas (owner of the Tivoli in Downers Grove)], "Typically when you have an existing shell, a rough number [for renovation] is about $1 million per screen." ... In 2002, renovation cost estimates for the 1,200-seat theater building and its attachments were approximately $10 million.

Repairing the Harper Theater, in 2002, would have cost about 10x more than usual for a theater of its vintage. That seems like a decent index of the structure's dilapidation.

The article continues with a quote from Irene Sherr: "The theater now has deteriorated even further. They [Classic Cinemas] felt it was in terrible shape then and basically you had to rebuild the theater behind keeping the facade."

These statements from 2006 seem to corroborate the University's appraisal in this week's Herald, that "the building is in rough shape -- so bad it may not last another winter. In recent weeks, it has been surrounded with scaffolding, a measure to protect pedestrians from falling debris."

Makes sense. So what is Spicer's position on the scaffolding protecting pedestrians?

From the Herald, again: "He ... said the university doesn't have a permit for the sidewalk scaffolding."

Apart from this curious aversion to public safety measures, that's the second time Spicer is wrong, in one article. Kate Hawley actually checks this fact (bravo!), and tells us that a "valid permit is on file through February 15."

Perhaps the Hyde Park Historical Society, instead of scoffing at scaffolding, should ask its members to take time off work in order to hand out hard hats to all passers by?

(Fine Photograph of Herald Building on 53rd, with Large Brick Mass of Harper Theater Looming In Background, and Deteriorating Antiballistic Radar Platform Above. Credit: Shahzad Ahsan, Chicago Maroon)