The history of Chicago’s TimeLine Theatre, a nonprofit, ensemble-based company dedicated to shows centering history, goes back almost 30 years to a barroom chat between two DePaul University theater graduates, PJ Powers and Nick Bowling. The two got their classmates to kick in 50 bucks a person and set about doing shows in borrowed or rented spaces, increasingly finding artistic success.
During almost all of those years, though, this ambitious theater was seeking a home of its own.
Indeed, TimeLine held a press event heralding a new site as long ago as 2006. Like the other two dozen potential locations the company says it has explored over the years, that one at the Three Arts Club in Chicago did not work out. Nor did a separate plan to take up residence in the former Trumbull Elementary School in Andersonville, now the home of the Chicago Waldorf School.
But Thursday night, in an emotional marquee-lighting event at 5035 N. Broadway in Uptown that was reserved for the company’s friends and family, that long-held dream finally did come true in the shape of a new $46 million theater complex, replete with a well-equipped, 250-seat blackbox theater, a bar open to the street, rehearsal and event spaces and on-site offices.
A little over half of the 21,000-square-foot project is contained within the shell of a former furniture storage warehouse built for the W.C. Reebie and Brother Company in the 1910s, with the rest new construction. Some preservationists have been disappointed that the historic facade was not retained as first discussed. (TimeLine has said that proved to be impractical due in part to concerns about the structural integrity of the building.) But much of the structure remains, and care clearly has been taken to preserve a retro feel in the new building, as befits the space.
Although the State of Illinois contributed $1.5 million and the city of Chicago arranged $14 million in TIF funding through a $10 million forgivable loan and a $4 million loan to be repaid after completion, the vast majority of the project’s funding came from the company’s passionate individual donors. They were front and center at Thursday’s marquee lighting, the beginning of a busy weekend of celebratory events slated to include a mayoral ribbon-cutting at 10 a.m. Saturday, followed by an open house on Saturday afternoon wherein anyone can come in for a look.
The plan changed, but TimeLine Theatre finally begins construction on its new Uptown home
In an emotional speech Thursday night, artistic director Powers described “an audacious vision to build something bigger than ourselves,” and said that “a new bright light has been added to Broadway.” (He was referring to the Chicago throughway, of course). Executive director Mica Cole, who had to catch her emotions, described this as a “momentous night,” coming more than seven years after TimeLine first bought the building. And so, for TimeLine and Uptown, it was.
After some brief speechifying, mostly of thanks, the group headed out to the street for a sundown countdown and the ritual illumination of a vertical sign that, one day, might be shining just a few hundred yards up the road from a restored Uptown Theatre, which will have waited decades longer for its light.
TimeLine’s first show in its new space, “An Enemy of the People,” will begin performances in May.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
