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Ron Ehlers
"We essentially sold out the Uptown twice," Adam Rubin of the Chicago Architecture Center told Block Club Chicago after Open House Chicago weekend. The theater has 4,381 seats, and nearly 9,000 people came through its doors on October 17 and 18. No one had seen the inside of 4816 N. Broadway as a member of the public since the building closed in 1981. Around 1 p.m. that Sunday, the line ran north on Broadway as far as Carmen.
A few days earlier and a few blocks west, the Aragon Ballroom was marking its 100th year as a working concert hall. Uptown United had scheduled its annual Casino Uptown fundraiser there for October 15, with a 1920s theme and live music from the Lakeside Pride Jazz Orchestra. Both buildings come from the same decade and stand within walking distance of each other. One has never stopped booking acts. The other drew record-scale crowds just to walk through it, and those crowds don't change the number that decides whether it reopens.
Uptown's entertainment district rests on three buildings that opened within about ten years of one another. Only the empty one still lacks a working plan.
| Venue | Address | Opened | Owner | Status this fall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Riviera Theatre | 4746 N. Racine Ave. | About a decade before the Aragon | Jam Productions | Booking concerts |
| Uptown Theatre | 4816 N. Broadway | 1925 | Jam Productions, since 2008 | Closed since 1981; open two days for Open House Chicago |
| Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom | 1106 W. Lawrence Ave. | 1926 | Live Nation, since 2017 | Booking concerts in its centennial year |
Jerry Mickelson, whose Jam Productions owns both the Uptown and the Riviera, bought the Uptown as the only bidder at a 2008 foreclosure auction. He booked shows there during its concert years, when Prince, Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead played its stage. The last event was a J. Geils Band concert in 1981.
Mickelson told Block Club why he put the theater on this year's Open House list: "I don't know what the fate of it's going to be, so I want people to see it now before something happens to it, you know, whether it's good or bad."
Once the weekend ended, the open house became a campaign. Jam's Uptown Theatre page thanks visitors, asks them to post photos and video under #BringBackTheUptown, and offers a prewritten email to public officials asking them to support the redevelopment. Mickelson told Block Club that regular paid tours of the building in its current condition wouldn't raise enough to matter. "I can't fill the gap any other way," he said. "The reality is: The doors will never get open unless we get more help from [the city]."
The gap he means has a size, and it isn't the first time the project has run into it. A 2018 deal to finance a $79 million redevelopment with city and state money fell apart in 2021 after Mickelson's partnership with Farpoint Development dissolved. His current estimate is nearly $200 million.
The money would come from tax increment financing, or TIF, collected in the Lawrence/Broadway district. In July, the city's Department of Planning and Development told Block Club that Mickelson's October 2024 application "seeks a level of TIF assistance that substantially exceeds program guidance of approximately 30 percent of total project costs and what's reasonably available within the Lawrence/Broadway TIF district." The department said it had advised him on a more viable proposal and had not received an amended application it could support.
The city put that 30 percent guidance next to two recent deals. TIF help for six approved office-to-residential conversions on LaSalle Street averaged 35 percent of total costs. The Congress Theater restoration, which includes 16 affordable housing units and 13,000 square feet of commercial space, came in at about 31 percent. Mickelson's answer, in an email to Block Club: "providing TIF assistance equal to only 35 percent of the project cost is simply insufficient."
The district's own budget helps explain why the two sides are far apart. The city's FY27 TIF projection report, current as of October 23, 2026, shows the following for Lawrence/Broadway:
Put those figures against a nearly $200 million project. Thirty percent of that cost is about $60 million, which is almost double the district's entire available balance at the end of 2025. The same district also funds other neighborhood projects; the report lists obligations for Timeline Theatre Company and CircEsteem alongside the theater. The same report projects unallocated funds reaching about $67.9 million by the district's December 31, 2037 end date, with much of that arriving in the district's later years. The guideline share for a project this size could fit within the district's lifetime totals, but it is far more than the district holds today, and any deal has to work inside a window that closes on a fixed date. Nearly 9,000 visitors showed the city that people want the theater back. The visits did not change the timing of when the district's money comes in.
Mickelson's case is that the Uptown fills a real gap. He told Block Club it would hold 5,600 people as a general-admission room, which suits acts that want something smaller than the United Center. He also said a "meaningful financial commitment" from the city would help him bring in private and philanthropic money for the rest.
The Aragon's century shows the other way an Uptown palace has survived. The Karzas brothers opened it in 1926 after success with the Trianon Ballroom on the South Side. Into the early 1960s it was one of the city's top ballroom dance halls. Then it changed hands several times and for a stretch ran as the Cheetah Club, with its Spanish-courtyard decor covered in sheets. It kept hosting concerts through all of it. The city landmarked it in 2016, Live Nation bought it in 2017, and in 2019 the naming rights went to Byline Bank.
Uptown historian and journalist Robert Loerzel told Block Club the original goal was for dancers to feel "like they're standing out in a courtyard in Spain under a starlit sky," and that "the room still kind of has this magic quality to it." Uptown United Executive Director Sarah Wilson called the Aragon, along with the Riviera, "truly been an anchor in Uptown." For the centennial, Live Nation offered discounted four-packs of tickets. The venue also ran a neighborhood passport challenge that gave free concert tickets and a commemorative poster to people who visited participating local businesses.
The Aragon got through ownership changes, a renaming and covered-up decor because shows kept going on inside it, and it reached landmark status and a corporate owner while still open. The Uptown has been dark for 45 years, and its restoration now depends on a request to the city's planning department.
The Uptown Theatre is closed again, but the halls around it have a full winter calendar. Listings can change, so check each venue's page before you go.
As for the Uptown Theatre, Mickelson told Block Club that he and the Chicago Architecture Center haven't yet discussed whether it will be part of next year's Open House Chicago. The funding question now sits with the city's planning department and the Lawrence/Broadway TIF, and the district's December 31, 2037 end date is the deadline.
Living a short walk from a hundred-year-old ballroom is part of what makes an Uptown address what it is. If you'd like a steady, local read on how the district's venues and projects fit into owning a home here, Ron Ehlers is glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
Contact
320 Tudor Court
Glencoe, IL 60022
Ron Ehlers