Roy M. Close: Hennepin Avenue needs the Shubert

The history of a city is written in bricks and mortar, and one hallmark of a great city is that it respects its heritage by preserving its old buildings.

What put this thought into my mind? Maybe it was last weekend's national conference of the American Planning Association, which brought urban planners from around the country to Minneapolis for five days of meetings, workshops and tours. Planners like old buildings. They understand that a community can't intelligently plan for the future if it has no feeling for the past.

Or maybe it was the recent announcement that Sega GameWorks, one of Block E's anchor tenants, is looking to sublease its space -- a development that prompted Star Tribune columnist James Lileks to call for razing the entire block. "Tear it down," he snapped in his April 24 column. "It's a big, garish, ugly failure. ... And that's just the outside."

Or maybe it was hearing that Mayor R.T. Rybak and Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin will lead a "Rally for the Shubert" Monday at the Shubert Theatre in downtown Minneapolis. The purpose of the 2 p.m. rally is to let the public know that the Minnesota Shubert Center capital campaign is closing in on its $41 million fundraising goal. More than $36 million has been raised. Only about $2 million more is needed to start construction, according to Colin Hamilton of Artspace Projects, the project's nonprofit developer.

The gap could shrink dramatically when the Minnesota Legislature passes this year's bonding bill. The Minnesota Shubert Center will receive $2 million if the Senate's version of the bill prevails. The Shubert's return on investment makes it a "smart use" of bonding dollars, Hamilton says, because the Shubert is "shovel ready," will create more than 100 construction jobs, and will leverage $25 million in construction-related spending.

But even more than that, Hamilton sees a functioning Minnesota Shubert Center as "fundamental to the health of Hennepin Avenue," given the uncertain future of Block E.

For the record, I'm an Artspace employee too. I was hired a decade ago, not long after the Shubert Theatre took that memorable ride from the far side of Block E to its new home on Hennepin Avenue next door to Hennepin Center for the Arts. The Minneapolis City Council had voted to move it to accomplish the dual purpose of saving the Shubert while making room on Block E for the very entertainment complex that Lileks now wants to tear down.

A decade later, with Hennepin still widely perceived as an "unsafe" street, the answer seems clear: We all do.

Forget for a moment the 40 nonprofit organizations that will use the Minnesota Shubert Center regularly for teaching, rehearsals and performances. Forget the 1,200 jobs they provide and the many thousands of adults and kids who attend their performances or take part in the Shubert's free long-distance education program.

Think only about what it will mean to Hennepin Avenue to have the Shubert Theatre back again -- brightly lit on the outside, alive with activity within, bringing families downtown for dance, music and theater.

The Shubert is where the Bainbridge Players staged a new show every week for 23 straight years, where Minneapolitans first saw "Birth of a Nation," where Hope Diamond stripped and Oral Roberts preached, where Mike Todd and Liz Taylor watched the premiere of "Around the World in 80 Days."

The Shubert is a vital part of our civic heritage. It's high time we got it back.