Local development group gets a shot at the Madison
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- Published on Monday, 10 February 2014 17:46
- Written by Paul Gordon
A local development team has been granted exclusive rights to work toward rehabilitating the Madison Theater and the connected retail building, the city of Peoria and the theater owners announced Friday.
That team, called NXG Developments, will have 90 days to negotiate a purchase of the Madison from the Comfort family and the adjacent parking lot from the city, elements NXG need to acquire to deliver a proposal it made for the theater's renovation, said Chris Setti, assistant city manager.
Those negotiations have started, Setti said, but they are but the first steps in the process of renovating the city's last remaining historic theater where Vaudeville acts once reigned. He said there has been no cost figure set yet for what it would take but "obviously it will be multiple millions of dollars. It's a big project."
NXG Developments proposes to renovate the theatre and the retail along Main Street that is connected to the building. It also proposes to build a multi-story, mixed-use building in the parking lot at Madison Avenue and Hamilton Boulevard.
NXG was started by two members of Peoria's business community. One is Katie Arnholt Kim, vice president at Horan Construction Inc. and a small business specialist with the Kim Group – Keller Williams Realty. The other is Jim Grube of ReMax Unlimited Commercial. Their respective companies and The Farnsworth Group Inc. are also listed part of the NXG team.
"We are extremely excited about the concepts that NXG Developments have presented and are confident they are the right team to execute such an important project," said Mayor Jim Ardis in a written statement. "Their plan, while still in the very early stages, maximizes the opportunity. They understand both the value of the historic structure and the possibilities that new construction can bring."
Setti said the cost of acquiring the Madison and adjoining property could be the chief variable to determining if the project will go forward. He said NXG was one of only two groups to respond to the city's request for ideas of what to do with the property once the Comfort family agreed to consider proposals and that it was well ahead of the other in its concept.
"That is why we thought the best strategy was to give NXG an exclusive window to try and negotiate a price with the Comforts. If they can reach an agreement with Comfort family and the city (on the parking lot), the next step would be to negotiate a redevelopment agreement," Setti said.
The negotiations with the Comfort family will be for the property it owns. It will not include Hoops restaurant, which is owned separately.
Setti said he is optimistic about the project's chance of succeeding. "This is a great group of developers and I believe the Comforts are sincere in their desire to see something done. It's an important part of downtown, so we are hopeful," he said.
Previous attempts to revive the theater, which was built in 1920, have worked briefly. It was a popular concert venue in the early 1990s and was later a comedy club. But those were eventually doomed by the amount of money needed to make the building meet life safety requirements.
Previous estimates have put renovation costs at anywhere from $12 million to $18 million, the real stumbling block to getting anything accomplished without any kind of guarantee the theater then would be economically feasible.
The Madison was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and in 2013, was named to the Illinois Landmarks 10 Most Endangered Historic Places list.
