Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Theater ticket price

Looks like veteran SIU-beat reporter, Caleb Hale is on the City beat now. Good choice by someone at the Southern, since Caleb knows the city-- and the university -- pretty well. Yet his recent Varsity Theater update leaves one important question unanswered:
"The Varsity is for sale, though the asking price is unknown. Calls to Kerasotes representatives, based in Chicago, were not returned Tuesday."
Doesn't anyone in the City know how much Kerasotes is asking for the property? Doesn't the City Manager know? the Mayor? Kevin, the business development guy? Carbondale Main Street?

I guess the price is moot, since there is no clearly stated public plan for anything to be done with the Varsity. What can be done? Paint a mural on the wall?

The city should issue a mural incentive. Beautify your building or tear it down. Like what the City sent to the Bank of Carbondale regarding the old Stage Company building: repair or demolish.... Except to warn: beautify or demolish.

7 comments:

Castle Perilous Games said...

I looked into it a couple of months ago and was told Kerasotes wanted $500,000

Anonymous said...

I used to live in Austin TX. They had a Varisty thearter that was closed. Eventually Tower Reocrds bought the building. They agreed to preserve the exterior of the building. My point is the new owners do not have to use it as a threater. I would appauld our hard working full time mayor if he were to put some effort into finding a buyer.

On a difffernt but near by issue: The DQ is an eye sore. But I was on a trip recently in southern Missouri and saw several new DQ's that were very modern looking with tables outside and nice land scaping. They looked more like Starbucks! Could we get DQ to upgrade our DQ?

Calion said...

Have I mentioned that I saw 'em pulling out all the seats a few months back?

Anonymous said...

A big FOOEY to the Anonymous that complained about our DQ. The Carbondale DQ is one of the very few original surviving Dairy Queens in the United States. In fact, it was one of the first hundred DQs ever in the US.

Anonymous said...

Hey bob, put down your hammer. It would be great to have a star bucks dairy queen on Illinois. That old curb is getting kinda old, don't ya think?

It's embarassing to point out the ledge to visitors -- where locals sit to eat their DQ treats, as ghostly foot traffic of yesteryear passes by.

PeterG said...

I think this demolish the DQ movement is just getting going. We have done in "the Tap", then the DQ, then Booby's, the Varsity, and ...

Demolish all the old buildings and put in Starbuck DQ's, Micky D's and Long John Silver's in their places. Maybe a Blockbuster drive through for the entertainment? No need for parking or walking, everything could be drive through!

Genus, pure genus.

Anonymous said...

My point on the DQ was to work with the company to upgrade it not to demolish it. If it has some historic significance perhaps that could be worked into the new design. I have seen Classic McDonalds with laptop hookups, espresso machines, descent art work and jazz background music. The old and new can work together.

See:

http://www.dairyqueen.com/en-US/About+Dairy+Queen/Corporate/Press+Releases/The+World-Famous+DQ%C2%AE+Red+Ellipse+Logo+is+Changing.htm

http://www.dairyqueen.com/en-US/DQ+Franchising/default.htm

http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/blogs/eye_on_business/?p=64

-Anonymous at 8:20

PS: The word is "genius" Peter, not "genus". ;)