South Side Chicago’s 14-screen Chatham theater complex may reopen as early as July under a new name: The Chatham Cinemas.
“Sometimes there’s a Hollywood ending,” the property’s owner, Jon Goldstein, said Friday.
Advertisement This is heartening news of what we’ll call a maybe-probably. Earlier this month the Dallas-based Studio Movie Grill, hammered by the pandemic like everyone in the moviegoing business, cut ties with the Chatham 14, closed since March 2020.
But now, Goldstein is rolling ahead with plans to rebrand and reopen the venue located at 210 W. 87th St., just off the Dan Ryan Expressway.
Advertisement He intends, he said Friday, to refresh the interior and exterior to the tune of an estimated $1 million — and more firmly establish the theaters, as year two of the pandemic allows, as a neighborhood destination and community player, financed partly by public and private investment.
Along with the Chatham operation, Goldstein owns and operates nine Emagine-branded theaters in Minneapolis, three in the Detroit area and two in Pennsylvania.
His plans for the reborn Chatham Cinemas, said 21st Ward Ald. Howard Brookins Jr. Friday, can be “a win-win for the community. Jon’s trying to create a neighborhood theater, as opposed to just a theater in a neighborhood.” Brookins discussed the theater’s future Saturday during a virtual town hall meeting.
If plans come to fruition, the venue’s official name will be “The Chatham Cinemas, Powered by Emagine,” with ticketing services provided by Emagine Entertainment. Goldstein maintains a licensing and partnership agreement with Emagine.
Detroit-based Emagine runs 25 movie venues in four states, including a 10-screen Frankfort, Illinois, location as well as a Lake Geneva, Wisconsi, location. In 2016 the Frankfort theater was repurposed out of a Dominick’s grocery store.
Goldstein has owned the Chatham property since 2019. It’s rare to have a landlord who’s also invested in the movie exhibition game.
“I’ve been trying to get a theater in Chicago for 20 years,” he said.
Private investors, Goldstein said, had to “put up close to a million” to service the Chatham property’s loan and keep the building “out of the hands of the bank.” Goldstein’s near-term plans, he said, include seeking property tax relief (“the property value has diminished greatly”) and, like so many other owners of entertainment venues shuttered by the COVID-19 crisis, making his case for long-delayed federal Shuttered Venue Operator Grant funds, also known as the “Save Our Stages” initiative.
“We’re applying on Monday,” Goldstein said, “so hopefully we’ll get an answer.”
With its emphasis on upscale dining options, the Studio Movie Grill concept, said Ald. Brookins, never was a great fit for the neighborhood. “Some of the choices on the menu were really more about the suburbs,” he said. (SMG’s sole remaining Illinois location is in Wheaton.)
He added: “You just can’t make a little kid like gourmet nachos.”
In mid-May, Goldstein said, he and Ald. Brookins will reconvene and discuss issues of financing; community involvement and cleanup; the transfer of the liquor license; and, if the finances and community partnerships are favorable, a target opening date this summer.
Earlier this year, news of a Discover Financial Services call center taking over the former Target location at 86th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue brought good news (starting wages: $17.25 an hour) to Chatham development. A reopened multiplex would be good news as well.
“We want to run a movie theater but we look at this as potentially doing some true community work,” Goldstein said.
His design plans include a theater lobby makeover, and walls and hallways lined with movie posters inspired by Black film history.
In other words, he said, “we’re really going to try not to look like an AMC.”
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
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Twitter @phillipstribune
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