Right now, it doesn’t look like much more than a pile of dirt.
But for the first time in nearly a decade, the famously empty lot on the southeast corner of 47th Street and King Drive, where Chicago’s fabled Regal Theater once stood, is showing signs of new activity.
Construction workers have begun laying the foundation for the much-delayed Lou Rawls Theater and Cultural Center, and the man for whom it is named figures that he’ll be singing on its stage in 12 to 15 months.
If that happens, perhaps the most storied corner in South Side cultural history — the place where Nat “King” Cole, Muddy Waters, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, Billy Eckstine and hundreds more performed — will swing once again.
“When I grew up here, you had the Regal Theater on one corner, the Metropolitan Theater on another, the Savoy roller rink next to the Regal — there was activity wherever you looked,” says Rawls, surveying an intersection that was the epicenter of the culturally vibrant, heavily populated district known as Bronzeville.
“I grew up at 45th and South Parkway (the old name for King Drive), and the Regal was the place where we went to see Basie, Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and all those people. It was where we cut our teeth on show business.
“People like myself, Sam Cooke, the Dells, the Chi-Lites, the Flamingos — we all lived in the neighborhood, we all went to school together, and we all went to the Regal to see the live stage shows.”
But the economic decline of Bronzeville, begun in the mid-’60s, led to the demolition of the Regal in 1973 and transformed the once thriving corner of 47th and King Drive into a scar on the urban landscape. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that an ongoing civic discussion on reviving the neighborhood inspired dreams of a Lou Rawls Theater, which now is being conceived as the main attraction of a blues district along 47th Street.
The plans didn’t have much chances of becoming reality, however, until 1997, when Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd) and state Rep. Lovana Jones (D-Chicago) began to secure more than $5 million in state and city funding for an arts center where the Regal once reigned.
Last May, Mayor Richard M. Daley, Tillman and officials from Tobacco Road Inc. (the non-profit group overseeing the project) turned out for a historic groundbreaking, with high school marching bands parading jubilantly around the site and crowds gathering to celebrate the occasion.
But when nothing happened for months afterward, skeptics began to wonder if it all had been a political charade for a project that never would get off the ground.
“We truly thought we were going to get started with construction last summer, but then we ran into a unique engineering problem,” says Tillman. Specifically, she explains, engineers discovered that the soil on the site was too soft and wet to support the edifice.
Having sunk cement supports into the ground, workers recently began laying the foundation, which should be completed by May.
When the building is finished, probably in the fall of 2000, it will be home to an 800-seat theater, radio and television broadcast facilities, music school, educational training center, jazz-blues restaurant and other amenities.
To Rawls, however, the place is not simply about bricks and mortar but, more important, about the value of the lives of Chicagoans who will live near it.
“When I was growing up here, you didn’t have to hang out on the streets, because you had somewhere to go, something to do,” says Rawls. “They don’t have that now.
“Everything was different back then. In this neighborhood, you had extended families. Everybody knew you, knew your folks, knew who you were. And if they saw you doing something stupid, they’d call you on it.
“Now these kids running around the street, they don’t know who they are, where they are, where they’re going.
“We’ve already got a couple of lost generations. We can’t keep losing them.”
Obviously, no single edifice is going to solve a litany of urban problems. But the Lou Rawls Theater and Cultural Center, with its range of attractions, represents the boldest step yet in attempting to rejuvenate a once-celebrated Chicago neighborhood.
Still, the plan has its critics. Wallace “Gator” Bradley, recently defeated in an attempt to unseat Tillman as alderman, has called the project a “farce,” citing its many delays and reliance on public financing. He and others complain that city and state funds are paying for the lion’s share of the Rawls Theater, which has generated less than $1 million in funding from private sources.
“We’re sure not getting as much as the Oriental Theatre did,” counters Tillman, pointing to a for-profit venture in the Loop that received slightly more than half its $32 million refurbishment costs from the city. (The rest came from now-bankrupt Livent Inc.)
“Everybody makes such a to-do about what’s going on here, but this is the first time that any arts money like this has been spent in our community. It might be difficult for some people to see why anyone would want to support our music with that kind of magnitude, but this music is important.
“Look at the Checkerboard Lounge (a few blocks away, on East 43rd Street). People from all over the world come there. That proves that if you put art and music in our community, all the people will come.”
But if the idea is so viable, why has it generated little private support?
“You have to realize, this is not like trying to raise money for something in the downtown community or a lakefront community,” Tillman replies. “We had to start from scratch, clean up and buckle down and really go deal with this. A lot had to be done just to get as far as we have.”
Tillman, in other words, didn’t expect to raise a great deal of money from an economically depressed neighborhood. Nor did she anticipate private funds to roll in until the long-delayed project was under construction. Now that it is, she says, she hopes individuals and corporations will begin writing checks.
Though local merchants hope the Rawls Theater can serve as an economic magnet, attracting other businesses and clientele, some fear for their own futures.
“I’m glad the Lou Rawls Theater is happening — we’ve been waiting for at least eight years for this,” says Gerri Oliver, proprietor of one of the most famous saloons on the South Side, Gerri’s Palm Tavern. Located across 47th Street from the site of the Rawls Theater, the Palm Tavern was an oasis for performers working the Regal. Between sets, everyone from Ellington to Basie would dine on Gerri’s famous red beans and rice, all the while catching up with show-business friends and Bronzeville glitterati.
But Oliver, whose Palm Tavern occupies rented space, wonders whether the building she’s in will survive commercial development of 47th Street.
“I don’t know if I’m an endangered species,” she says. “We hear that there are plans to tear down a lot of 47th Street, but we’re not included in the planning.”
Certainly it would make sense to preserve historic spots such as the Palm Tavern as part of any blues district, because the place was home to so many Regal Theater performers.
“The Palm Tavern was where all the big athletes and artists hung out, and, as kids, we would just stand outside on the sidewalk and watch them go in and out,” says Rawls. “But I’m staying away from the politics. That would be the worst thing in the world for me to do.”
For Rawls, the project caps several decades of championing minority causes (including his work for the United Negro College Fund telethon), a passion he dates to a turning point in his own life: a near-fatal car crash he suffered in 1958, when he was touring with Sam Cooke.
“The chauffeur, Eddie, was killed, Sam got a little piece of glass in his eye, the guitar player got his collarbone broken, and I was pronounced dead on the scene,” says Rawls.
“Turns out I had a concussion, and my brain was kind of protruding from my head,” he adds, pointing to a faded scar. “It took me a while to get straight again, but it made me realize that I was just a speck of dust on a grain of sand. I guess you could say it gave me a sense of direction.
“To know that had I died at that point I’d have been just another soul that took up some time and space and had done nothing, it made me realize that there was a reason, a purpose. What it was, I didn’t know, but since then, I’ve tried to raise as much money for other people as I can.”
The Rawls Theater, however, may be the singer’s most ambitious project; certainly it has been the most elusive.
Once it’s built, says Rawls, who lives in Los Angeles, he plans to re-establish a Chicago residence so that he can be involved in “hands-on operation” of the venue.
“I wouldn’t stay here in the winter, to be honest with you,” says Rawls, who plays 150 to 200 dates a year and jokes that he lives not in Los Angeles but at LAX.
“When the Hawk comes,” says Rawls, referring to the bitter winds off Lake Michigan, “I’m out of here.
“But spring, summer, fall, that’s cool. This theater is what I want to do.”
