RocHaus to reopen in West Dundee, shows booked for rest of year

RocHaus, the downtown West Dundee entertainment venue, will reopen Friday, Oct. 2, with “The Magic of John Westford,” and already has 10 other shows booked so far for this year, owner Kevin Krak says.

“We’ll have more shows than we had when I first opened and from when Rookies was involved, with a full, robust, diverse calendar,” he said.

Krak spent several years renovating the 98 W. Main St. building, formerly the Clearwater Theater from 2003 to 2011, opening it as the RocHaus in October 2017. When restaurateur Bob Karas was brought in to oversee it in 2023, he added his “Rookies” brand to the business’ name.

After Karas opted not to renew his lease earlier this year, Krak invested about $20,000 in making renovations to the building before hiring Nick LeRoy as the venue’s new director of entertainment.

In a Facebook post, Krak cited LeRoy’s 18 years of “independent talent-buying experience, booking artists for some of the Midwest’s most respected theaters, clubs, performing arts centers, outdoor amphitheaters, baseball stadiums, city events and festivals … his impressive list of past bookings includes Wilco, Ludacris, Whiskey Myers, Cheap Trick, Nelly, Jason Isbell, Jamey Johnson, Soul Asylum, Buckcherry, The Revivalists, The Dead South, Robert Randolph, Carly Pearce, Cooper Alan, The Wailers, Chris Janson, Blues Traveler, Blackberry Smoke, Kevin Bacon, Aaron Lewis, Bret Michaels, Busta Rhymes, Billy Bob Thornton, Chris Kattan and many more.”

Krak said there was “no way I was going to let the theater sit dark.”

“It’s an integral piece of West Dundee. It was just a question of how, when and with whom,” he said.

The location first opened in 1910 as the Crystal Theater, a vaudeville house that later began showing movies, according to the RocHaus website. The marquee was added about 1940 and over the decades, it has been known as The Dundee Theatre, The New Dundee Theater and Dundee’s Main Street Theater.

Real estate agent Ginger Kries bought the building in 1973, in part to stop the theater from showing adult movies, and leased it to Douglas Clendening’s Dollarodeon Management Co., which went bankrupt in 1977. The movie house reopened under new ownership in 1978 and operated on and off, showing second- run movies at bargain prices until about 2000, according to Courier-News reports.

The space was renovated by another set of owners to become the Clearwater Theater, a music venue that operated from 2003 and to 2011, when West Dundee shut it down for selling alcohol without a liquor license.

Along with its legacy, Krak said it’s important to keep RocHaus open for what it provides to the Fox Valley and West Dundee.

“Live music is a very important piece of the community. It brings people together, and now more than ever we need that,” he said.

Krak also owns 98 W. Main St., next door to RocHaus. That building had been home to Bleuroot restaurant, which closed in January after seven years. Krak said he’s still looking for a buyer for the space and is asking $1.25 million for it.

Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The (Elgin) Courier-News.