Column: What’s next for the beloved Pickwick Theatre — and what they shouldn’t ignore (hint: it’s the movies)
After months of announcements that an announcement would be forthcoming — yet did not, in fact, come forth — we now know. We know who’s taking over the lease at Park Ridge’s Pickwick Theatre.
We know that live entertainment, along with some movies here and there, will be the new focus. The four-screen mini-multiplex behind the main venue will continue to show first-run movies.
So what’s actually going to be in the main venue, for the ticket-buying public, later in 2023?
A beloved landmark for nearly a century, the Pickwick marquee this week announced the news in shorthand: “Coming Soon — Copernicus at the Pickwick.” Pioneer Press reporter Caroline Kubzansky’s recent story fleshed out the developments. The Copernicus Center, under its nonprofit Copernicus Foundation umbrella, has entered into a long-term lease agreement with Pickwick’s longtime co-owners Dino Vlahakis and Dave Loomos.
At the Copernicus, located on West Lawrence Avenue in Jefferson Park, it’s mostly live music, all kinds, along with some high-profile author events. The spacious Jefferson Park venue is larger than but atmospherically similar to the 800-seat Pickwick.
Copernicus board chair Hubert Cioromski, who runs the local real estate firm Troy Companies, now serves as property manager of the Pickwick. He has hired events consultant Mike Jeffers, founder of Chicago Jazz magazine and recently a programming adviser on the opening of the West Loop’s Epiphany Center for the Arts.
It’s “super early,” Jeffers told me Wednesday, “but our goal is to activate programming at the Pickwick. It’s such a gorgeous facility. So many opportunities. The stage is already set to go for live music and theatrical performances. And now we’re putting our heads together for the programming.”
Cioromski says they’re likely to pull out the first four or five rows of seats, “for what they call a ‘mosh pit’ in this day and age. Maybe a dance floor capability.” He’s thinking an annual production of “The Nutcracker” might work around the holidays. He’s also thinking a holiday film festival. (The current, enormous movie screen in what’s called Theater One will be removed later this summer, though there’s a good-sized screen ready for use behind that one.)
Jeffers said that his experience with booking “jazz, blues, rocks, Latin, world music, all kinds” should serve the Pickwick events calendar well. “It’s a perfect place for short-run theatrical productions, too. A lot of times, you go into an older historical venue, and they’re not really ready for different options. But the Pickwick is fantastic.”
He toured the place earlier this week; the Des Plaines native remembers going to movies there as a teenager. “I was walking around downtown Park Ridge on a Tuesday night, and let me tell you, the restaurants, the foot traffic, everything was hopping. What they’ve done with the downtown there is spectacular.”
Cioromski said that “over the next couple of months we hope to give the Pickwick interiors a fresh look. There’s some work to do, since (the venue) hasn’t been used for live events.” He’s wondering if a modestly scaled “Blue Man Group type situation” might work for a limited engagement.
“We’ll see,” he says.
Here’s the part where I lean into my screamingly obvious bias toward maintaining the Pickwick’s film component in its next phase of existence.
For years now, the Pickwick has hosted Matthew C. Hoffman’s monthly Park Ridge Classic Film Series. At a time when most theaters (including the Pickwick) have had to adjust their revenue expectations pandemically downward, like the rest of the world, the Pickwick’s affiliation with the classic film series has proven remarkably hardy. Seven hundred people for “Jaws” earlier this summer. “Jaws,” you can see anytime, anywhere, but there’s so much to be said for seeing it with a big crowd, screaming their heads off, even if they know Richard Dreyfuss is about to find a disembodied head in the water.
Hoffman says he’s hoping to open his new season at the Pickwick with “High Noon” in September.
It took a while to get the Pickwick to this point, where the nonprofit Copernicus Foundation, with Jeffers as programming consultant, has a blank slate of entertainment possibilities to sort through, and finance.
This much is clear: The Pickwick is something more than a symbol of the past, or a nostalgia novelty for Park Ridge. The venue may be unfashionably scaled, and a little ungainly. But it’s special. And it dodged a bullet earlier this year. Among various renovation and reorientation plans, the property manager and owners considered handing the theater over to a tenant whose plan was to convert the interior to a glorified banquet hall and ancillary restaurant. The deal didn’t work out, and it’s really hard not to add: fortunately.
We jack around with our few remaining classic entertainment venues, whether they were built for movies or for vaudeville or both, at our civic peril.
“We hope to do a good job with the Pickwick,” Cioromski says.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
