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Originally Posted by Chicagoguy
What are the plans for the Uptown Theater? Wasn't it recently bought and aren't there plans to restore it?
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The restoration costs are astronomical. Yea, Jam bought it...big deal. They paid $3 million. It will costs upwards of $40 million to fix. No private entity has that kind of cash to throw around. And it will not be materializing anytime soon, especially with the state and city mired in economic black holes. This dosen't even touch on the fact that there have been no viable reuse proposals. Most of the older theaters in Chicago (Vic, Riv, Aragon, Congress) are pretty run down themselves and are general admission mosh pits with all seating removed. They only get used a few times a week as it is, and the Aragon/Congress max out the size of acts that would still be performing in these kinds of places before jumping to stadiums.
Can the city absorb another 4,000 seat theatre doing Broadway shows, far outside the downtown core? Then you get into issues like parking, access, and the safety of the neighborhood in general. The challenges are staggering.
I think Jam bought it while riding the Olympic bid wave, hoping that all sorts of neighborhoods would start seeing influxes of cash. Their move was probably as much an effort to keep it out of Live Nation's hands than it was a serious proposal to fix it up. I find it difficult to remain optimistic it will ever be restored, and it truly is sad our society so casually throws these types of gems away. What does that say about our values? Unfortunately the space was obsolete almost the instant it was built. Best case scenario will probably be a facade-ectomy, something similar to the Shriner Temple/Bloomingdales....and Broadway is hardly N. Michigan Ave. Likely scenario? It continues to be passed between owners and courtrooms while rotting away for another 10 or 20 years before becoming structurally unstable.