Auction is curtain call for historic Highland Park Theater
The Highland Park Theater, a fixture east of the railroad tracks in the city's downtown for nearly a century, is being sold in pieces as a curtain call before the building's demolition.
Vintage movie projection equipment, reel storage racks, period seats, original wall sconces and even an Art Deco popcorn machine are among the 300 lots of items available in an online auction that runs through Oct. 4.
For movie buffs, history lovers or owners of old-time theaters, it's a chance to secure a keepsake, augment their collections or give new life to old-fashioned pieces.
"The goal for this auction was to give everyone an opportunity to get a piece of history. It's a recycling project," said Renee Jones, president of National Properties Solutions Inc., the Deerfield-based company running the auction.
The Tudor revival-style building opened on Central Avenue on Oct. 1, 1925, as the Alcyon Theatre. It hosted Charleston dance contestants on Saturday night, and stock companies and vaudeville teams performed. In its early days, organ music accompanied silent films.
"Imagine walking into the theater and imagine everything being available," Jones said. "It's truly a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling liquidation."
The city will preserve the marquee, as well as a ticket marquee dating to the vaudeville days that was uncovered in the basement, according to City Manager Ghida S. Neukirch.
The marquee will be delivered to the Highland Park Historical Society, said Scott Canel, whose Canel Companies now owns the theater.
Items up for auction range from the nondescript - like an entrance mat, fire extinguishers and trash cans - to more rare theater artifacts, including a reel rewinder, vintage film splicer and movie screens. Dozens of rows of theater seats and numerous movie poster frames also are on the block.
Over the years, the venue's original interior changed as modifications and expansions divided the building into four movie theaters ranging from 130 to 410 seats, showing first- and second-run films. But in all its forms, it was a destination for generations of patrons, including Jones.
"The last movie I saw there was 'The Avengers,' so it wasn't that long ago," she said.
That movie premiered in 2012, just before the city-owned venue was closed for safety reasons.
Efforts by the city to repurpose the old theater started about 10 years ago. When a feasibility study for the acquisition and reuse of the property was approved, the city noted it was suited for a cultural and performing arts center.
The city bought the building for about $2 million in 2009 with hopes of creating an economic stimulus. In subsequent years, studies were commissioned, proposals and public input sought and an advisory committee formed.
However, none of the options to reuse the building proved viable.
An agreement to sell the property was reached with the Alcyon Foundation in 2013, but the group withdrew because it could not get financial support for a mixed-use venue or financing to continue the theater's long-term operation.
Ultimately, a proposal by the Canel Companies was accepted. The $1.1 million sale closed Sept. 8.
"I actually grew up in Northbrook and went to the theater in the '70s," Scott Canel said.
Now the building is in such poor condition, it's not possible to reuse it, he said.
However, Canel said it is important to boost activity in what he called "the sleepier side of downtown."
A planned two-story building on the site will have three restaurant spaces and a courtyard. Lindsey's Place restaurant will provide job training and experience for young adults with disabilities, according to Canel. He also plans to move his office to the second floor.
"Not only are we reinvesting in the community but hopefully providing something that will last 50 or 60 years or more," he said.