Talk about a road show. In February 1999, the 2,908-ton Shubert Theater was hoisted onto 570 rubber wheels and carted one block north on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, from Block E to Block D.
The 12-day spectacle rivaled any performance that had occurred on the theater’s stage, even during its burlesque days. Historic preservationists cheered: Minneapolis’s oldest existing theater had been saved. City officials were relieved: Block E would soon be cleared for redevelopment. Hundreds of bystanders watched the building inch across parking lots and through an alley until it was hoisted onto its new foundation near the Hennepin Center for the Arts. The massive effort earned Minneapolis an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records (for the heaviest building ever moved on rubber dollies).
Then, things seemed to come to a standstill.
In the ensuing years, the surface parking lot that was once Block E became an entertainment complex of uncertain social and cultural value. The State, Orpheum, and Pantages theaters on Hennepin Avenue—all historic “painted ladies” full of ornate detailing—were saved and lit their marquees with offerings of Broadway, ballet, and concerts. Light rail scooted downtown, with its terminus at the north end of Block D in the Warehouse District. Meanwhile, the Shubert sat, dark and forbidding, behind Block D’s Hennepin Avenue bus stop, classical music blaring from a radio wired to an open window to keep ruffians at bay.
"Rain was coming through the roof. A lot of the ornament had been stripped away or fallen off, but I didn't care. Here's the main point: It's the space. Theaters are space; they're not what's encrusted on the walls. And the Shubert's space immediately struck me as wonderful."
But despite the apparent stasis, much was going on behind the scenes. In the next six years, Minneapolis-based Artspace Projects, the nonprofit developer that owned and moved the Shubert, made several strategic moves—instituting crucial programming, acquiring business and public-safety supporters, and securing significant private funding. By the 2006 bonding session, Artspace had also gained the bipartisan support of the Minnesota Legislature, which granted the funds that should finally make the proposed performing-arts complex a reality.
With approximately $17 million in public money ($12 million of that coming from the state) and $20 million from the private sector, the Minnesota Shubert Performing Arts and Education Center is scheduled to make its premier in 2008. Assuming there are no more of the big obstacles it has already overcome—about $12.5 million still needs to be raised from private sources—the Shubert will become a key part of downtown Minneapolis’s ongoing shift from retail center to residential, cultural, and entertainment district. Along with a growing number of condo residents, the performing arts—and the attendant restaurants and music clubs—are helping transform the economic foundations of the central city.
