The theater's latest owner, the Uptown Entertainment & Development Corp., has raised $3 million in three years, in a bad economy, to revive the historic venue. The first phase, which began in August and is expected to be completed in the spring, will convert the upper floors into office space, retail stores, and a center for youth arts and education programs.
The price tag to restore the 2,100-seat auditorium and balcony, where audiences once clapped and swayed in their Sunday best, is an additional $7 million.
"We're hoping to complete the project in 2013," said Linda Richardson, Uptown Entertainment's executive director. She acknowledged that securing first-phase funding - a collection of city and state money, a federal grant, and the bulk from private donations - was "quite a challenge."
For phase two, "we want to reach out to the entertainment community," Richardson said, "people who actually had their starts there," from fledgling blues singers in the '50s to early hip-hop artists of the '80s.
In its time, the Uptown Theater, built in 1929, has been a movie theater, vaudeville house, rhythm-and-blues venue, nightclub, and church. In its heyday, it was one of the few stages in the country that courted black audiences.
"That place was smokin'," said Wallace, a former Marine and drug rehab counselor who endured the Uptown's long lines in his silk threads and shiny president shoes. "Oh, man."
Aretha Franklin. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. The Mad Lads. Ray Charles. The Mighty O'Jays. The Supremes. Jackie Wilson.
"You name it," Wallace said, "anybody who was somebody played here. To see it go down, it hurts. It hurts the block."
A few passersby, some familiar faces, agreed.
