If there’s any place in Chicago that deserves another lease on life, it’s the old Roseland Theater.
Built in 1914 at 113th Street and Michigan Avenue, the nearly 1,000-seat theater was among the city’s earliest movie houses. When it closed in 1977, the building managed to evade the bulldozer and served as retail and office space until 2018.
And now the building is among three sites along Roseland’s beleaguered Michigan Avenue shopping district — called “The Avenue” by locals during the street’s mid-20th century prime — that are being targeted for redevelopment under the city’s Invest South/West program.
A lot of ink has been spilled (and social media energy expended) over the last 40 years lamenting The Avenue’s decline. Here’s a chance to reshape the street for the better, and perhaps create a model showing how it could be done elsewhere.
‘Diamond in the rough’
Studio/Gang, led by celebrated Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, is on one of the teams vying for the 115th Street site.
The city’s Department of Planning and Development has selected for redevelopment three locations along Michigan Avenue: The former Gately’s People’s Store site at 11201; the Roseland Theater; and parcels at 115th Street, where a CTA L stop is planned as part of the proposed Red Line extension.
The city seeks a new mixed-use building and housing for the Gately’s site. The Roseland Theater could become office and business incubator space, while markets, restaurants and cafes are sought for the parcels at 115th.
The improvements are aimed at the decayed heart of The Avenue, a mile-long shopping strip between 107th and 115th streets that offered everything from school supplies to new cars during its postwar prime.
“It’s a diamond in the rough,” city Planning Commissioner Maurice Cox, told the Sun-Times in 2020. “I was surprised and delighted to see it’s all there.”
The plans for the three sites were shaped by community input gathered from Invest South/West sessions.
Roseland residents and community leaders said they wanted to see Michigan Avenue revived with commercial activity, tourism and pedestrian traffic.
If successful, the plan could bode well for the future of Invest South/West, an ambitious plan hatched under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot to redevelop the commercial corridors in 10 South and West Side neighborhoods.
Mayor Brandon Johnson was critical of the initiative during his campaign for City Hall’s Fifth Floor, but so far, he has taken no public steps to end or significantly alter the program since taking office.
Final designs picked this summer
Each of the three sites has three development teams selected as finalists. The teams will present their final designs for the sites by July 26.
A planning department spokesperson said city officials and community members will select the winning team for each project. They will also decide which project — and there could be two — will go first.
If there’s a downside to all this, it’s that the cost of this phase of rebuilding The Avenue is unknown — but it’s going to cost.
The Invest South/West project at 79th and Halsted streets is $43 million. Another, in Woodlawn, is $48 million.
And while the Invest South/West program seeks to build these projects with $2.2 billion in public and private investments, the city’s contribution is still sizable.
But for years we’ve seen the alternative — little or no city investment at all, not just in Roseland, but across the South and West sides. And that’s far more expensive in the long run.
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