The Aurora City Council is set to vote on a $5.5 million grant to help the Aurora Civic Center Authority, which manages the Paramount Theatre and RiverEdge Park, through losses incurred because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Aldermen meeting as a Committee of the Whole this week moved the vote on the grant to the regular City Council meeting at 6 p.m. Dec. 13 in the council chambers, City Hall, 44 E. Downer Place.
The money would come from the about $13 million the city has left of the $35 million it received in federal American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, funds that were designed to help businesses affected by the pandemic.
“This is exactly what the federal government envisioned when it passed ARPA,” said Ald. Edward Bugg, 9th Ward. “The Paramount is the engine (downtown). We need to help the engine.”
City officials have pointed out that the Aurora Civic Center Authority, which manages the Paramount Theater, Copley Theater and RiverEdge Park, is one of the four main revenue creators in the city, along with Fox Valley Mall, Chicago Premium Outlets mall and Hollywood Casino.
The city has helped the other three, and now it’s the Paramount’s turn, officials have said. The Paramount and its Broadway Series have generated a large number of people coming to downtown, fueling economic development downtown.
The theater is now the largest subscription-based theater in the country, despite being hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, just as the entire theater industry was.
The Paramount ascended to number one from number two because the theater that was ahead of them was actually hit harder by the pandemic.
Tim Rater, Aurora Civic Center Authority chief executive officer, has said the Paramount lost 15% to 20% of its subscriber base due to the pandemic, while industry-wide, those losses were 40%. The Paramount was at about a 41,000 subscriber base before COVID-19, got as far down as 29,000, but is back to about 35,000, he said.
The $5.5 million would help the Aurora Civic Center Authority cover losses in the immediate short term, officials said, although ACCA also has to cover some of it, too. But the grant is tied to the authority and the city developing a long-range operating plan for ACCA in the future.
Aurora Civic Center Authority officials have said they would work with the city to develop that plan. Rater said this week theater officials “are beginning to think about the future,” even as far ahead as to the Paramount’s 100-year celebration in nine years.
“We are envisioning a downtown that is quite remarkable,” he said. “We are working very hard internally to achieve that.”
