Chicago Tribune: The north suburban Northlight Theatre plans to return to Evanston, the city of its birth, in a spectacular way: as the street-level centerpiece of a shimmering-rise, 37-story development replete with a boutique hotel, a restaurant, high-end rental apartments and 250 parking spaces.
4 comments:
As I hail from the North Shore, seeing more opportunities arise for professional theatre is an exciting prospect. Several cultural institutions exist in the area, providing a wide range of art and history to experience. Skokie, where Northlight is currently housed, is also home to one of the highest concentrations of living Holocaust survivors outside of Israel and is home to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. In the surrounding areas, one can also find Writer's Theatre (a "friendly rival" of Northlight), Ravinia Festival (The oldest outdoor music festival in the U.S.), and many other cultural institutions. In many ways, the area emulates Chicago's art scene, striving to make sharp political commentary on the state of our nation and the global community. Thus, seeking to expand the area's culture is a great boon to the community, further anchoring the motley collection of artists and culutral institutions to the Chicagoland area and driving consumption in the local economy.
New theatre locations are typically exciting projects because it signals a growth and forward motion in the arts and the theatre. However, choosing how, where, and when to build your theatre are important questions that the organization must be able to answer. Our class in Theater Management ended with a project that entailed creating your own arts organization. The theatre must align with the demographics, competition, and arts environment that exist in the potential community. Uncalculated decisions in any of those fields can be problematic with a new theatre. New facilities face huge initial payments and a need for a large amount of capital. Ensuring that the organization has the ability to do this is just as important as choosing a new location. I think that this move is specifically interesting because the theatre is returning to its original location. Often when theatres build new facilities, they are not that far away from the current location because you want to keep your subscriber base intact.
I am also from the Chicagoland area and think that this is an exciting step for Northlight Theatre to move back to Evanston. One of the tricky things with people in and around Chicago is that they do not want to go to another area. People on the Northside do not want to go to the Southside and getting west of the city is just difficult. Part of the problem is that the roads are difficult and not always direct, and traffic is almost always terrible. As the article points out, the commuter train and the “L” train go to Evanston, but the article does not emphasize how great it is that there is also a hotel and parking garage in the same building. This would enable people who wanted to go on a stay-cation to drive to Evanston, see a show, and explore the town over a few days. Also, adding more nightlife and available parking into an already bustling college town could revitalize the retail sections that are downsizing.
Moving Northlight Theatre back to Evanston would allow many opportunities to open up for the community in and around that area. After spending a summer in Evanston, I noticed that it was possible to get into the city for theatre using the transit system, but not always the easiest or safest. This makes it difficult in particular for students without a car to be able to go to other parts of Chicago to go see good theatre. Northlight Theatre has been growing tremendously over the past few years, and I think this is a smart (though costly) move for them to go back to Evanston and have the opportunity to reconnect with the community that shaped them into what they are today.
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