After 35 years of abashed starts, abandoned promises, a court-ordered auction and oft-reckless neglect, the 4,381-seat, 46,000-square-foot Flush Theatre — already the gilded acme jewel of the Balaban & Katz amphitheater chain, and amid the best abundant and attractive cine palaces anytime congenital in America — is assuredly to be adequate to its 1925 glory.
In added words, what continued has seemed absurd to dogged, adherent preservationists, nostalgists and the active advance accumulation accepted as the Friends of the Flush is assuredly accident on Chicago’s North Side. And an agitative $75 actor has been disconnected calm and set abreast for the apology of a alarmingly addle and aged amphitheater that was boarded up afterwards a J. Geils Band concert on Dec. 19, 1981, abrogation crumbling Chicagoans alone with their memories of already seeing Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Prince or the Grateful Dead central its celebrated bones.
This is not aloof addition plan for the 4816 N. Broadway flagship of the Flush neighborhood, insists Ambassador Rahm Emanuel. This time it’s for real. Assuming the plan passes the Burghal Council and added authoritative hurdles, the apology and redevelopment activity is slated to activate this fall. Aural two years, the boards should be off the windows, the area accessible for business and a analytical accessible careening already afresh bottomward the admirable antechamber staircase.
“This is the accomplishment of a promise,” said Emanuel in an account Thursday. “When I was still mayor-elect, I talked about creating an brawl commune in Uptown. Our investments in ability are one of our best drivers of bread-and-butter advance and job conception in our neighborhoods.”
The new Flush will be a collective and according adventure amid the Chicago-based apostle Jam Productions (which acquired buying of the landmarked Flush for $3.2 actor in 2008) and Farpoint Development. A new affiliation article will be formed.
Relatively new to the Flush party, Farpoint Development is led by Scott Goodman, who co-founded Sterling Bay and helped body that close into one of Chicago’s better and best-known bartering absolute acreage developers, with projects including McDonald’s headquarters’ move to the above armpit of Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios and Google’s Midwest abode in a above cold-storage warehouse. Goodman and three added longtime Sterling Bay admiral larboard the aggregation in 2016 to alpha Farpoint.
“The Flush is an amazing asset in an amazing neighborhood,” Goodman said. “This was the attenuate befalling to do article absolutely cool.”
Goodman said the artist for the activity has yet to be selected.
Jam’s specialty is concert promotion, but the plan is for the Flush to affection a arrangement of alive events.
“Concerts. Comedy. Dance. Special events. A accomplished aggregation of things,” said Arny Granat, the co-founder and co-owner, with Jerry Mickelson, of Jam Productions. “This is a bold banker for the city. It’s not aloof about concerts, it’s about the bread-and-butter development that now will action in the Flush neighborhood”
Granat additionally said that, for some events, main-floor seats will be removed, acceptance for an admirers accommodation as aerial as 5,800. Alike with all-seated events, the Uptown’s admeasurement eclipses all added theaters in the city, including the 3,901-seat Auditorium Theatre and the 3,600-seat Chicago Theatre, both of which are about to acquaintance some appalling new competition.
From uptown.
The mayor’s appointment said the piecemeal costs for the Flush Theatre comes from an arrangement of accessible and clandestine sources: $14 actor in costs through the Accompaniment of Illinois’ Property Assessed Clean Energy Act; $13 actor in tax-increment financing; $10 actor in Body Illinois band funding; $8.7 actor in federal tax credits; and $3.7 actor in the Burghal of Chicago’s Adopt-a-Landmark funds. Jam and Farpoint are blame in the actual $26 actor in a yet-to-be-determined mix of debt and equity. The apology arrangement additionally includes $6 actor in streetscape improvements to portions of North Broadway, and Lawrence and Wilson avenues and Argyle Street, including a new banal capital and accessible stage, amid aloof south of Lawrence and Broadway.
The byzantine alley to apology — and the campaigns to abstain the accident brawl — accept been as artificial as one of the movies the Flush showcased in the 1920s.
Back in 2002, politicians and arts supporters, including Ivar Albert Goodman, captivated a account appointment announcement an approaching restoration. But the nonprofit accumulation calling itself the Flush Theatre and Center for the Arts did not accept the money to access the building. And Goodman’s $1 actor donation bound was spent with annihilation accurate to show. In a civilian complaint, the Illinois advocate general’s appointment declared the money had been spent on purchases at affluence hotels, restaurants and accouterment stores.
“This theater,” said then-Ald. Mary Ann Smith, 48th, to the Tribune, “tends to allure bodies with stars in their eyes.”
Indeed it did. All kinds of bodies with all kinds of fantasies.
But as aboriginal as 2000, a abode by the Burghal Acreage Institute of Washington, D.C., had laid out the essential, accurate altercation for the Uptown: "Future ancestors will not absolve those who do not appear to this obligation."
For Chicago politicians, the Flush has been a above bewilderment for decades. Apology was jaw-droppingly big-ticket and appropriately above the ability of best clandestine owners, abnormally back success in the awful aggressive brawl business was far from assured. But what ambassador or administrator would appetite to be associated for activity with the annihilation of such a admired and altered beauty?
Designed by the acclaimed aggregation of C.W. and Geo. L. Rapp (known as Rapp and Rapp) and accustomed on aperture as absolute “an acre of seats in a abracadabra city” abaft its Spanish Baroque facade, the huge six-story lobbies and extra-wide staircases of the Flush could get 4,300 bodies out the doors, and addition 4,300 inside, all aural 16 minutes. In its aboriginal bristles years of operation in the 1920s, added than 20 actor Chicagoans went through its portals into a absurd apple apart, one that Rapp and Rapp had capital to resemble such creations as the Alcazar of Versailles.
There were amphibian “clouds,” tiny ablaze lights in the beam and alike a perfuming arrangement beneath the seats.
It was a far cry from Al Capone’s Chicago.
Had the Flush Theatre been in the Loop, it acceptable would accept been adequate continued ago, alongside the busy, celebrated theaters now endemic or operated by Broadway in Chicago and Madison Square Garden Entertainment. But the Uptown’s massive admeasurement — too big for abounding concerts and best Broadway musicals — and its area in a adjacency with cogent bread-and-butter challenges presented the bind of how to allure burghal and day-tripper audiences to an abode that’s about 8 afar from the bend of Accompaniment and Madison streets. Abnormally accustomed the about abridgement of parking and the ample cardinal of aggressive venues in the city.
By 2002, the abashed Friends of the Flush accumulation was calling reporters with belief of falling adhesive and pooling rainwater. Some in the accumulation doubtable that the endangered amphitheater was actuality carefully accustomed to rot and anon would be accursed for acceptable (or, their minds, bad). Others were blame for the burghal to access the architecture through eminent domain. By the summer of 2008, there had been a court-ordered foreclosure auction and aggressive bids, arch to Jam Productions demography ascendancy of the architecture through a aftereffect company, UTA II, controlled by Mickelson and Granat.
Jam’s acceptable bid was broadly apparent at the time as a arresting move to adverse the incursions into the burghal by such rivals as Alive Nation and MSG Entertainment. But demography ascendancy and reopening were two actual altered things. The Flush could not aloof be reopened to the public: At the time, Jam argued that no apology would be accessible after accessible money, which was not again forthcoming. And thus, although Jam invested in and counterbalanced the Uptown, and averted the building’s affliction problems, the amphitheater remained on the endangered lists.
A attending at the accepted accompaniment of three of Chicago's best beautiful, shuttered cine palaces: the Central Park Theatre, the New Regal Amphitheater and Flush Theatre. (John Owens, Chicago Tribune)
A attending at the accepted accompaniment of three of Chicago's best beautiful, shuttered cine palaces: the Central Park Theatre, the New Regal Amphitheater and Flush Theatre. (John Owens, Chicago Tribune)
A few reporters, documentarians and artists begin their way inside. In Chicago’s 2012 Cultural Plan, the Flush Theatre got a hopeful mention. And in 2017, a music video was fabricated by Regina Spektor central the apparitional but atmospheric building, absolute to a new, adolescent bearing what was hidden abaft the barriers to entry.
But those who accept fought for — and appear on — the amphitheater accept developed old while the Flush has languished, its keepers fearing every astringent storm.
So what changed? The architecture bang in the burghal has absolutely been a factor, as has the awakening of burghal brawl venues and the burghal bread-and-butter drive in general, generally advancing at the amount of the suburbs.
Farpoint is amid the developers attractive to capitalize on the civic urbanization trend. Its better action is the proposed redevelopment of the 49-acre above Michael Reese Hospital armpit and added acreage south of McCormick Place into residential and bartering buildings. The project, alleged the Burnham Lakefront, was one of bristles Chicago sites that Amazon visited in March as the e-commerce behemothic scouted sites for its planned additional headquarters.
This isn’t Farpoint’s aboriginal attack into cultural development: Goodman afresh was complex with an bootless attack to body a new home for the Northlight Theatre in city Evanston. But that was abeyant new architecture with boisterous bounded opposition. The Flush is a accomplishment of a neighborhood’s dream.
“This is not clashing allurement kids if they appetite addition Christmas, or Chicagoans if they appetite addition Apple Championship,” said Andy Pierce, the co-founder of the Friends of the Uptown, an alignment with a 20-year history of campaigns and agitation, and now with after-effects to show. “You aloof don’t accommodated anyone who doesn’t appetite the Flush saved.”
Tribune anchorman Ryan Ori contributed to this story.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
From 2017: Joffrey ballerina dances at Flush Theatre in Regina Spektor's new music video »
From 2017: As Wrigleyville booms, Uptown's commune is larboard in the dust »
From 2015: A account of two Uptowns »
Read added of Chris Jones' columns on the Amphitheater Loop »
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