5 mar 19 | Chicago Tribune

Steppenwolf Theatre, known for bold moves, plans a new $54M theater-in-the-round project on Halsted Street

By Chris Jones

In a development likely to reshape, and possibly reignite, the Halsted Street corridor in Lincoln Park and impact the fiscal and artistic fortunes of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company for years to come, the storied Chicago theater is to break ground Tuesday on an ambitious and costly $54 million project that will create a new education center and a 400-seat theater-in-the-round, built on the parking lot south of the theater’s current 1650 N. Halsted home.

The long-in-gestation building, which has been designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill and the British theater design company known as Charcoalblue, is expected to open in the summer of 2021. Those two firms previously collaborated on The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, a $35 million project that made use of the existing shell of the old Skyline Stage at Navy Pier.

“When you look at Steppenwolf’s 45-year history, it’s been marked by a constant desire to be innovative,” Eric Lefkofsky, chair of the theater’s board of trustees, said in an interview Monday. “It’s become apparent that the existing campus just can’t meet all our needs. We wanted to give the artistic ensemble all the tools they need.”

By contrast with most arts capital campaigns (as a point of comparison, Navy Pier kicked in $15 million toward the cost of The Yard), Steppenwolf’s new theater is almost entirely self-financed. At this juncture, at least, neither public funds nor significant foundation dollars are involved.

“But we’re hoping that will change,” said Steppenwolf Executive Director David Schmitz, saying the theater, which has an annual budget of about $17 million, still has $8 million left to raise toward the cost of the theater, along with another $27 million to completely fund a $73 million campus expansion.

Phase one involved the 2016 purchase of the former Ethan Allen furniture store directly north of the existing theater and the creation there of a cabaret theater and a successful new coffeehouse and bar. Phase three, destined for some point in the future, involves a top-to-bottom rehab of the original theater, the company’s home since 1991.

About a year ago, Steppenwolf, which famously began life in a basement in north suburban Highland Park, netted about $8 million from the sale of Yondorf Hall, a four-story building at 758 W. North Ave. long used as rehearsal space. The buyers, Chicago developers CA Ventures and Springbank Real Estate Group, intend to develop residences on the parking lot. By selling the building, Steppenwolf lost its income from its retail tenant, but most of that $8 million has been used as a down payment on the new theater.

According to Lefkofsky, the Groupon co-founder and current CEO of health care startup Tempus with a fortune estimated by Forbes to be $2.3 billion, the remaining funding for the new theater has come almost entirely from personal donations from the theater’s board of directors and members of its acting ensemble, some of whom have enjoyed careers in film and television that have made them rich.

“The ensemble,” said the 49-year-old, Chicago-based entrepreneur, “has been very generous.”

Asked if the board and ensemble had been unanimous in approving the current expansion, which the theater has been discussing and refining for years, Lefkofsky said, “You’re always going to have people who stand up and say, ‘Now is not the time,’ but we wouldn’t have done this without a resounding amount of support.”

Steppenwolf: Before and After
The new building planned for the Steppenwolf Theatre on Halsted Street in Lincoln Park is part of a three-phase transformation that began in 2015. Here is a look at the campus before 2015 and after the new theater is finished in 2021.

However, longtime Steppenwolf ensemble member Rondi Reed contacted the Tribune to say she was “worried about the repercussions of the building” and that several other longtime ensemble members shared concern. Another source close to Steppenwolf said the decision to move ahead with the project at this scale had caused at least one board member to tender a resignation, out of concern that the theater was getting in over its fiscal head, especially given its recent shift to more challenging and politically engaged programming and ongoing questions about the state of Illinois’ economic health. Steppenwolf is still carrying about $14 million in debt from its purchase of the 1700 N. Halsted building and the original 1991 move to Halsted.

That said, throughout its history, Steppenwolf, with its large, passionate, talented, famously contentious “ensemble,” rarely has made major changes unanimously, and most of its ensemble and trustees clearly are on board. There long have been controversies, ranging from early mishegoss over how much attention the company should pay to New York fame and fortune, to various shifts in artistic programming, to the 2017 decision by the theater’s leadership to publicly attack a long-serving critic, Hedy Weiss of the Sun-Times over a review they deemed offensive, instantly attracting highly critical editorials in both major Chicago newspapers. Under artistic director Anna D. Shapiro’s leadership, which began with the controversial departure of Martha Lavey in 2015, energy has shifted to a growing and busy group of newly added ensemble members, part of Shapiro’s determination to diversify her core of artists and, she has said, better reflect the demographic makeup of Chicago.

According to various histories of the company, the 1991 move to 1650 N. Halsted (under the patronage of then board chair Bruce Sagan) also was marked by disagreement and worry that the theater was taking on too much debt. But although a half-finished parking garage remained a vexing eyesore for many in the neighborhood, the move turned out to be artistically successful and a catalyst for further development (some would say gentrification) along Halsted Street, now the home of an Apple Store, a spruced-up CTA station and a slew of upscale restaurants, boutiques and residences.

“They built it like a bunker,” Shapiro said of the original building, noting the worries at the time that Steppenwolf audiences would not want to come to that location, which butted up against the Cabrini-Green public housing project. “The idea was that you’d run in, close the door behind you and then run back out.” Now, Shapiro said, the intent was to build “an invitation to the entire community,” an invitation she said will include improvements to the exterior appearance of the theater’s parking structure and a more welcoming face toward the street — and by implication, the entire city.

Shapiro also said the new building will create “Steppenwolf’s first extant education space” and provide classroom and support space for the theater’s education programming, presumably in the hope of attracting funding, as well as serving the students of Chicago.

That side of the development is not unlike the Goodman Theatre’s Alice B. Rapoport Center for Education and Engagement, which opened in 2016. But whereas the Goodman bases its education programs mostly around its mainstage offerings, the Steppenwolf for Young Adults program offers distinct, dedicated shows aimed at teenagers. It has not had dedicated space for students to meet or attend workshops.

Fixed theaters-in-the-round are relatively rare, and the format is not one with which Steppenwolf has had extensive experience. By way of explanation, Shapiro said the theater had wanted an intimate space that would not be a replication of its existing proscenium theater, which has a Broadway-sized stage house, and that would be “less scenery-dependent.” On the other hand, she said, the theater also did not want a traditional “second stage” but rather an artistically exciting space that would be seen as equal in stature to its mainstage, lest some ensemble members feel that their project would be shuffled “upstairs.”

The new theater, Shapiro said, will be notable for its intimate connection to its audience and also now give Steppenwolf a portfolio of three distinct spaces — a cabaret (the 1700 Theatre), a proscenium and a theater-in-the-round — a theater, she said, “where the architecture is primarily the human body.” The new theater will have some resemblance to the Circle in the Square theater, a storied Broadway space in New York that would be a logical destination for transfers, although the new Steppenwolf space will include the latest technological innovations and will be on the cutting edge in terms of its level of accessibility.

Gill, the lead architect, said he his firm had “approached the project in the way that you’d think about a play.” The new building will be about 50,000 square feet and, aside from the theater, it will contain classroom and rehearsal space co-existing on the same floor, meaning students have a chance of running into a highly accomplished and possibly famous actor on a break.

“The ultimate idea,” Gill said, praising his client’s interest in the “spiritual life” of the building, “is that there will now be a village of architecture at Steppenwolf that works as a full ensemble.”