THEATER

The Highland Park Theater is open for business........ Please come and spend money in our downtown and our theater. Bring your friends and family and enjoy a great movie in this historic theater. While it needs work, the enjoyment is there for your taking.

Thanks to our Mayor Nancy R. Rotering we have begun to move forward on improvement of this entertainment site. We had a very good exchange of ideas at our last City Council Pre-Session meeting where I was comforted from our current City Council vision of entertainment, historic recognition, and MOVEMENT forward on preservation and adaptation. Bottom line was everybody was willing to listen to all ideas and decide on the future of this site within a short term timeline.
If someone wanted to restore the old Highland Park Theater into a digital cinema and restore the inside, I would not be happier. That being said, there are several entertainment options that excite me.  In addition to movies in the existing configuration we could add some live entertainment component to the mix. This would probably be the least expensive option and provide a 200-300 seat capacity venue for live theater and movies . One of the major problem with this theater is that as you approach the rear of the theater it dramatically narrows. At the halfway point, where the front theater ends, it could provide sufficient space for live theater if the stage was moved forward a bit. When you add a mix of food and drinks to the venue, you could have a successful operation. It could be set up as in a club style...... I hope we get lots of proposals and am excited about this future.

Other options include using the parking lot to the East and redeveloping the theater and parking lot together. Ideas of a small hotel/theater/event facility have emerged from discussion and are out there. Bottom line on the parking lot is that we need all those spaces and maybe more. Anyone willing to develop that site must realize they would have to make us whole on the public spaces and provide parking for whatever more space they build out.

Anyway, just wanted to give and update on the Theater and seemingly fast track is it on to a hopeful redevelopment proposal. The Council has asked staff to discuss RFP and RFQ alternatives at our next meeting to send out in the near future.