They just didn't want to deal with replacing the hideous carpeting so they're gonna tear the whole thing down.
Quote:
The story of the Rosemont Theatre comes with useful historical wisdom: Venues have a habit of cannibalizing each other. Rosemont seriously messed with the Auditorium Theatre and the Chicago Theatre only, over time, to itself become a victim of changing habits and ownership. To put that another way, either the venues at Lincoln Yards won’t do well in the long term, or they will do well by taking business from somewhere else. It’s either that or grow the whole pie — which might happen if Chicago gets Amazon, sure, but, even then, would it not be better for the city if all those affluent new residents left the immediate environs of their neighborhood, the one with five convenient venues?
Here’s what I wish Sterling Bay was doing: investing not in venues but in content providers. That’s another way of saying artists and entertainers. Humans. Creative humans. Locally based creative humans. That’s why Chicago is so remarkable and resilient a city.
We should be spending our precious resources on the buoying of their work. Competing venues featuring out-of-town acts run by an out-of-town promoter can be found in any big city. Surely, Amazon wants what is unique.
And that’s Chicago content — beautiful, messy, truthful, musical, gorgeous, challenging, radical, entertaining, relaxing, revolutionary content. Everything else is just a building.
This sounds nice but Amazon just wants as much taxpayer money as they can get. They'll go to a cultural black hole like Charlotte if that's where they get the most money.
_________________
Molly Lambert wrote:
The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.
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