Marriott Moxy Hotel | 240 Tremont Street (Parcel P-7A) | Theater District

So what ever happened to the Sager Family Trust's plan?
 
I think the BRA gave them a limited amount of time to come up with a plan, and they did not meet the deadline.
 
They probably meant that the Modern Theater will be the last one to be restored.
 
The owner of the RKO wants to rip it out for office space, but the cost of demolition and construction is preventing it, along with the midtown cultural district's guidelines. Most of the current tenants are government agencies and the owner appears to have some connections, in addition to being very fond of currency, so it doesn't look good in my opinion.
 
Former Wang Center eyeing technology to promote arts
Boston Business Journal - 3:40 PM EDT Friday, July 20, 2007
by Naomi R. Kooker
Journal staff


Citi Performing Arts Center is implementing a new seven-year strategic plan that calls for a new business model it hopes will become a national model for other cities, Citi senior management said Friday.

Under the new plan, the Boston-based organization, formerly known as The Wang Center for the Performing Arts, will focus on new technology and interactive and educational programing to bring the arts into the community.

The plan, which Citi management calls visionary, is a multimillion-dollar undertaking that includes setting up video screens in Boston Common that display ongoing live performances, providing kiosks for people to sign up for classes and purchasing theater tickets via cell phone.

"The market has told us we had to do this," said Nancy Sullivan Skinner, recently brought on as the organization's new chief development officer. "The industry has undergone significant changes in recent years and the traditional operating business model that the former Wang Center was operating under was no longer sustainable."

Citi Performing Arts Center's operating budget is $8.4 million for fiscal year 2007. In seven years, it is projected to be $15 million.

The plan also calls for a shift from earned income to a greater focus on fund raising, said Skinner.

In fiscal year 2006, unearned income was 35 percent of the budget. Under the new strategic plan, it is slated to be 50 percent.

Citi Performing Arts Center heads said it will also continue renting out the Wang Theatre and other venues to increase earned income, and leverage internal expertise to offer theater management services.

The organization said it will look for strategic partners and sponsors to help implement the plan. It has about $1 million in funds so far.



Link
 
Video screens on the Common sound interesting...but how about replacing those bag signs on the theatres themselves first?
 
Banker & Tradesman said:
Venerable Theater To Become Modern
July 30, 2007
By Thomas Grillo,
Reporter

Hub?s First Cinema Facility in Need of Facelift; City Has Issued RFP to Prospective Developers

The Modern Theatre in Downtown Crossing was the epitome of chic when it opened as Boston?s first cinema in 1913.

Today, visitors to the crumbling 800-seat auditorium on lower Washington Street must wear a helmet to avoid falling plaster and step carefully across swollen oak floors damaged by rain.

But that could all change as soon as fall 2008. The Boston Redevelopment Authority has issued a Request for Proposals seeking to refurbish the deteriorating theater. The city is seeking proposals that will restore the building?s historic fa?ade, maintain its cultural use and add commercial space. Responses are due Thursday, Aug. 30.

?The building is historically significant but equally important is the fact that this project will be part of the revitalization of lower Washington Street and the Theater District,? said Sarah D. Kelly, executive director of the Boston Preservation Alliance. ?The Modern is the last of a trio of theaters that the city had pledged to save so it?s really exciting for us to think about its renovation and reuse.?

Mayor Thomas M. Menino has had its eye on improving Downtown Crossing for more than a decade. In 1995, the mayor convinced the National Trust for Historic Preservation to include the Paramount Theatre, the Opera House and the Modern on their ?Most Endangered List? to raise awareness about the need for preserving those links to Boston?s past. The three facilities are located on the block between West and Avery streets.

The following year, the BRA, the National Trust and the Boston Preservation Alliance held a daylong planning session to enlist ideas from the public, organize development proposals and implement strategies to preserve and revitalize Downtown Crossing.

In 2004, Clear Channel Entertainment completed a $38 million renovation of the storied Opera House. Last summer, the BRA approved Emerson College?s $77 million Paramount Center project.

That development will include restoration of the Paramount Theatre, the Art Deco building competed in 1932. The project consists of 145,000 square feet of new construction in the adjacent Arcade Building including a restaurant, classrooms, dorms, faculty offices, practice rooms, 1,900 square feet of rehearsal rooms, a sound stage and several small theaters. Completion is expected next year.

At press time, only two applicants paid the $500 fee for the Modern RFP: Suffolk University in Boston and Newton-based Northland Investment Corp. Sara Scarborough Graham, a Northland spokeswoman, declined comment. John Nucci, Suffolk?s vice president of government and community affairs, did not return a call seeking comment.

Officials familiar with the project say Suffolk is ?wired? to get the city?s approval to purchase the Modern for $2.7 million. The BRA has approved the university?s plan to convert 10 West St. next door to the Modern into student housing. Plans include remodeling the interior of the building into a dormitory with 274 beds and ground-floor retail.

?A Difficult Project?

The Modern was built in 1876 to house furniture and carpet showrooms. In 1913, theater architect C.H. Blackall designed a narrow cinema in the Ruskinian Gothic-style building. It was designed specifically for the exhibition of moving pictures, which was then a new medium.

Blackall added a 2-story white marble fa?ade. In 1927, ?The Jazz Singer,? starring Al Jolson, premiered at the cinema. It tells the story of the son of a Jewish cantor who defies his father?s wishes to pursue his dream of becoming a jazz singer. Tickets were 15 cents.

After operating for 35 years as the Modern, the building was renamed the Mayflower Theater in 1949. It continued to show movies, although some historians say vaudeville also was performed in the theater in the 1930s. But by the early 1970s, the cinema was showing pornographic films, mirroring the decline along lower Washington Street that was dubbed the ?Combat Zone.?

The last attempt to restore the building was made in the late 1970s. It has been vacant for nearly 20 years and is in a state of severe neglect and disrepair. The condition of the interior of the 7-story is so bad that the new owner is expected to raze everything but the fa?ade and rebuild the facility.

?The Modern has been a difficult project to do because it?s been neglected for so many years,? said Harry R. Collings, the BRA?s executive director. ?The owner had left huge holes in the roof and water just poured through. There was a court order to demolish it, but the mayor wanted to save the building and the BRA took it by imminent domain for $1.5 million.?

Katherine Kottaridis, executive director of Historic Boston Inc. ? a private, nonprofit organization that supports the preservation of endangered historic sites in Boston ? said keeping a theater in the building is essential because that portion of Washington St. has played an important role in the social and economic life of the city.

?Boston has always been known as a pre-Broadway town and Downtown Crossing has been a center for everyone to come and enjoy theater and movies,? she said. ?There is significance to the city culturally and architecturally and these are unique buildings so we don?t want to lose that cluster.?

Jeremy Liu, executive director of the Asian Community Development Corp., a Boston-based community group whose mission is to preserve and revitalize Chinatown, said activists hope the new owner will work with the neighborhood.

?We would love to see the Modern?s developer partner with a Chinatown arts or cultural organization,? he said. ?That would help make the Theater District more vibrant and connect it to the people who live here.?

Liu insists that Chinatown has been ignored when it comes to planning for Washington St. He said many residents are still angry about a series of projects approved by the BRA that razed several popular hangouts.

The Gaiety Theater at 659-679 Washington St. was leveled to make way for Kensington Place, an apartment community. The site of the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common on Avery Street once housed a bowling alley. The Archstone Boston Common luxury apartment project also lacked neighborhood support, he added.

?None of the new developments serve the Chinatown residents neighborhood,? Liu said. ?If you think about it, the Theater District turns its back on Chinatown. There?s not a single thing that orients toward our neighborhood. The Archstone apartment building is the crowning feather in the affront to our neighborhood.?
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The site referred to above was the location of the Hotel Avery, until it was torn down in the 70's or 80's for a big parking lot. Bowling alley??? Not unless the Hotel had one in its basement.
 
The Hotel Avery and a number of other buildings were torn down in the 1980s for a project called 'Commonwealth Center' that never happened because of financing problems. The big parking lot was not an intended use. Eventually, Millennium Place was built on this site.
 
Oh, wasted youth

Ah, yes, the Hotel Avery and assorted buildings.

Don't forget to mention the old Haymarket bar that was on that site.

Back in the mid-80's, I was new to the Boston bar scene and didn't know where Haymarket was. I was walking through Downtown Crossing and a police car came up.

"You look like a crime waiting to happen," he said.

I asked him where Haymarket was; of course he figured I meant Faneuil Hall.

I clarified, he gave me directions. The rest is distant memory.

It was pretty sketchy there.
 
Theater District

Hotel Avery motto: "Suicides Welcomed".
 
Um, Hello Dolly???

Katherine Kottaridis, executive director of Historic Boston Inc. ? a private, nonprofit organization that supports the preservation of endangered historic sites in Boston ? said keeping a theater in the building is essential because that portion of Washington St. has played an important role in the social and economic life of the city.

?Boston has always been known as a pre-Broadway town and Downtown Crossing has been a center for everyone to come and enjoy theater and movies,? she said. ?There is significance to the city culturally and architecturally and these are unique buildings so we don?t want to lose that cluster.?
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Really???? When, 1955??? We haven't had a pre-Broadway tryout here for at least a decade ...

She's not really being accurate.
 
No, she's not, but she probably figures it's a better case for preserving these specific buildings than "well, even though the industry they once supported isn't really viable in Boston anymore, they're might perty buildings, aren't they?"
 
I saw "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" here two years ago, in a pre-Broadway tryout run at the Wilbur.
 
^ Revival of a forty-five year old show that was even made into a movie: that's what you call a tryout?

I call that a road show with the Boston stop occurring before New York's.

Familiar as an old shoe; nothing cutting-edge or risky, no pathfinding of dynamic culture.
 
Point taken, but does one look for "cutting-edge" or "risky" or "pathfinding" these days on Broadway?
 
Ron Newman said:
Point taken, but does one look for "cutting-edge" or "risky" or "pathfinding" these days on Broadway?
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Frank tried to tell us back in the 80's: "It's a new day on Broadway!"

251095373_2780787024.jpg


A bloody shame this didn't make it across the pond.

Perhaps we can hope for a revival of this little ditty.
 
Clarification

Yes, Ron, you're right of course, the revival of Virginia Woolf did play Boston on its way to NY. So, it does happen on occasion. I just felt it was important to point out that what she was saying was today's reality is in fact mostly fiction.

The Hotel Avery was often the home to traveling actors and actresses, and from what I remember reading, was quite the lively place with lots of high-jinks going on between the thespians (most likely, same-sex?).

Huntington Theater Company has had good success sending shows to Broadway from Boston. That's an encouraging sign. Still, it's just one company, and it usually does smaller shows. They wouldn't tryout a show at the Wang.

In fact, the Wang is the worst "theater" in the world. It's simply not realistic to think of using that for theater. Yes, they throw big "bus-and-truck" shows in there, but I think it's an insult to audiences to try to trick them into paying $100 to see a bunch of crap by third-string actors. Still, most enjoy.

I don't see the point in bringing back the Modern.

I would support plans to bring back the RKO, which I only know about because of you (Ron) and others talking about it. I find it fascinating that the theater is hidden back there, surrounded by office space. Few know it's there.

I don't think the Gaity needed saving, nor the Pilgrim.

They tore-down or tore-up plenty of theaters in NYC when things got tough, unfortunately. They could use them today, since Broadway theater is enjoying a renaissance. However, they can just build new theaters, there was no need necessarily to re-use. Why not build new? Plus, a lot of the old Broadway theaters were just impractical for today's audiences. The Uris, from what I remember, was something like 5,000 seats. It is now a church (I'm talking out of my ass here) which is probably all you could hope for.
 
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