A longtime dream of Northlight Theatre’s leaders is moving closer to reality.
The organization last month purchased property at 1012-16 Church Street in downtown Evanston as it moves closer to building a new theater complex on the site. The move will mark the return of the 45-year-old company to Evanston, where it first performed, as well as the first time the company has owned its own space.
The company has been holding performances at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie for more than two decades.
“It’s great to get to this point after so many years of trying,” said Executive Director Timothy J. Evans. “We can move forward on our long-range plan of moving back to Evanston and having a home of our own. This is an important and very significant breakthrough moment for us.”
Evans noted the company has been working toward this goal for seven or eight years. Evanston City Council previously approved plans for the project back in 2019.
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“We’ve tried a few times to work with developers on projects in downtown Evanston,” Evans said. “We decided at a certain time that we should just go it alone. So that’s what we’ve done with this project.”
Northlight is currently working on fundraising with a goal of tearing down the building and starting construction on a theater center in the spring of 2023, and completing construction by the summer of 2024.
The restaurant and bar that are on the property will remain as part of the theater complex.
Evans reported that the fundraising goal is $22 million dollars.
“We’ve raised half of that at this point, despite COVID,” Evans said. “We had the campaign on hold for about 16 months. We restarted it the last few months. So we’re well on our way.”
He added that because the company now owns the property, it’s helping with their fundraising effort. Evans is convinced that the new theater center Northlight plans to create will benefit the company in a number of ways.
“Because it is in a downtown urban area, I think we will increase our audience size,” he said. “We will draw a more diverse audience, which is very important to us. We will draw a younger audience because we are literally steps away from the CTA and the Metra.”
He added that there’s a built-in audience because of the many condominiums and residences in downtown Evanston.
Evans believes that the theater center will also greatly benefit Evanston. “We can help revitalize the downtown sector of Evanston.”
In addition to serving as a performance space, there will be an education center in the new facility and the opportunity for arts and social service organizations to utilize the theater center’s spaces.
“We’ve never owned our own space in the 45-some years that Northlight’s been in existence,” said Artistic Director BJ Jones. “We started off at the Kingsley grade school and then we were at the Coronet. We moved around a little bit and then finally, and gratefully, at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts for 24 years.”
Moving on from that longtime space has definite advantages for the company, though.
“It offers an opportunity to be in a downtown area in a property that we own ourselves,” Jones explained.
He added that it gives the company “the capability of scheduling our own work in our own time, the potential for new spaces and flexibility.”
Jones also praised the effect the new theater center will have on downtown Evanston, which currently has a number of empty spaces.
“Eight performances a week, three matinees and evening performances. Nearly 300 people every show coming to downtown, going to restaurants, shopping, walking around,” he said.
Jones has been instrumental in the planning of the interior space, including seating, sound quality, sight lines, audience comfort and actor and designer needs, among other aspects.
“We will have some modified flies. We’ll have working traps. It’s a bigger backstage space which will allow us to have set storage,” Jones said. “It will give us the opportunity to be more ambitious scenically. The sound quality will be better. We’ll have more dressing room space and a better rehearsal space that will be dedicated to just Northlight.”
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.