Group to save Varsity Theater tries to keep chin up despite uncertainties

Factoid:SAVE will next meet at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 30 in the basement of the Interfaith Center. The public is invited to attend.

At the last meeting of the community group Save Arts and the Varsity For Everyone (SAVE), there were more than enough words spoken.

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Two words, however, were mysteriously lacking, aside from the occasional casual reference – Varsity Theater.

Instead, the July 16 discussion at the Interfaith Center that led to so many frazzled nerves focused on the group’s proposed constitution and what changes needed to be made. For almost an hour and a half, provisional Chairman Jim Syler took a dozen members through a frustrating tour de force of Roberts Rules of Order in efforts to modify the constitution, and the meeting’s strict adherence to parliamentary order eventually led to a few too many tense moments.

“I think we’re wasting a lot of energy nitpicking the hell out of this,” said the Greylight Theater’s Bob Streit, breaking the collective tension. “It’s setting a dangerous precedent.”

And so, after a five-minute recess, members came back to the table and, in 20 minutes, approved eight articles of the constitution – four times what had been accomplished during the preceding time. Now, with a revised constitution and a meeting to elect officers slated for July 30, the ad hoc community group can get away from frivolous formalities and get back to the real business on the table, saving the Varsity Theater

“This is a major decision point,” said Hugh Muldoon, director of the Interfaith Center and the early convener of SAVE’s meetings. “There’s only so much frustration you can take before it gets turned against the organization.”

SAVE’s meeting last week came exactly two months after the Springfield-based theater chain Kerasotes Theaters opened its new ShowPlace 8 on the east end of University Mall, a modernized replacement for the 63-year-old Varsity, located at 418 S. Illinois Ave., which closed its doors the night before.

Since then, various community groups have all had their say on the fate of the building and its noticeable absence from downtown, beginning with a public forum in late May headed by Mayor Brad Cole and Roxanne Conley of Carbondale Main Street at which citizens were encouraged to express their own visions for the theater’s future.

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At the meeting, Cole told members that he had been in talks with Kerasotes about various possibilities and that there was no conclusive news to report.

SAVE, which began meeting early in the summer and has also attracted the attention of Carbondale city councilmen Chris Wissmann and Lance Jack, is campaigning to be the main go-to group for determining the building’s fate, and members have recently met with representatives of numerous city and cultural groups to form ideas about how to create an arts center out of the vacated building.

While reaction to such a plan has been enthusiastic, most organizations report that their funds are too sparse to allow investing in the enterprise. In addition, Cole told the group earlier this month that even though he was in continued talks with Kerasotes and had been told that the chain had not been talking with any potential developers, the city of Carbondale would not be contributing money to a possible reclamation of the theater.

Despite this, members of SAVE have set to work developing several business strategies for getting the building back, from buying it to subleasing it to hoping for a charitable donation – all routes that other Midwest communities have taken with Kerasotes in past similar incidents.

In addition, SIU Associate Chancellor for Economic Development Ray Lenzi has volunteered to help the group apply for non-profit organization status.

But time is ticking away on a building that some already fear could suffer damage from hot summer temperatures. For the time being, nobody is really sure what the next move is.

“We need to come clean on what we want to be,” Muldoon said at the meeting. “We need to get focused on our real agenda.”

Reporter Geoffrey Ritter can be reached at [email protected]