Foolishly high downtown rents sink theatre
“The theater is drowning in debt, thanks in part to expensive rent in the Loop theater district. Noble Fool didn�t say how much money it owes.” And so Crain’s reports that the Noble Fool, a token attempt to bring off-Loop comedy onto the ballyhooed “Randolph Street Theatre District,” has gone dark. The economies of small scale, and especially not the economies of small scale theatre (read: no economies), just couldn’t pay for a brand-new space in a high-rent district, regardless of the city subsidies that went into the space.
In some sense, if the Loop were more residential, that would bode well for tenants like Noble Fool: not only would there be a larger home market and a larger base of nighttime entertainment options (as it is, it’s not fun to be stuck in the Loop at 10pm; there’s nowhere to eat!), but the presence of residential (instead of office) would imply somewhat lower property values.
