New ‘Theater District’ Planned to Put Spotlight on Lake View

While Lake View is undoubtedly packed with culture, from the LGBT-friendly Boystown to the iconic Wrigley Field, one group of area officials is hoping to shine the spotlight on a different neighborhood niche: theater.

Spearheaded by two executive directors of Lake View business organizations, the newly formed Belmont Theater District is preparing to shed some light on the neighborhood’s bustling live theater scene. The district comprises about 25 theaters around Belmont Avenue between Broadway and Southport avenues practicing traditional stage productions, sketch comedy, dance, improv and more.

Maureen Martino, the executive director of the Lakeview East Chamber of Commerce, says she’s been working on this with a neighboring chamber for more than a year.

“We wanted to kind of put a focus on all the arts and culture that Lake View has in regards to theater and performing arts,” Martino said. “So Heather Way, the director of the Lakeview Chamber, and I are working together to try and do something that’s best for Lake View as a whole. We started talking with the theater owners and some interested restaurant owners who are interested in doing theater-restaurant packages, and we want to do different things that really highlight this area.”

Martino and Way started working together after the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs began working on the 2012 Chicago Cultural Plan. After holding workshops and engaging the Chicago community, the Cultural Affairs department said they were interested in focusing on the veins of the city, or in other words, neighborhoods like Lake View.

“The focus is to bring the spotlight on all the different areas, and in doing that, we might start Theater Thursday Nights where we do specials with trolleys."

“That’s something we’ve been begging for for so long,” Martino said. “Everything is centralized around downtown with things like Millennium Park and Navy Pier, and the city of Chicago is really based on neighborhoods… The cultural affairs office wanted to engage the neighborhoods and make them cultural hubs, so we said, why not make Lake View a theater district?”

Now, more than a year later, the movement has finally begun. The duo recently launched a Facebook page to inform Lake View residents and theater enthusiasts about the plan, and Martino says they’re starting to pull together a marketing plan.

One thing the Belmont Theater District has to overcome, however, is distance. With the theaters spanning between Broadway and Southport, the group realizes they’ll need to think of some new ways to make the ‘district’ feel small.

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“We had a lot of dialogue with theater owners and with business owners about calling it a ‘district’ because it’s so spread out and not as walkable,” Martino said. “The focus is to bring the spotlight on all the different areas, and in doing that, we might start Theater Thursday Nights where we do specials with trolleys. People could even become a regular customer, like a subscription-based program.”

And the Belmont Theater District isn’t only aiming its efforts at tourists. Martino says she and Way are hoping to snag local residents who may not have attended a show in the past.

Between locals and tourists, the new group is hoping to make Lake View an even larger cultural destination than it already is.

“We really are excited about this because it’s not only going to put us more on the map for tourists coming in, it’s going to give Lake View a little bit more of a brand beyond the baseball,” Martino said. “Everyone knows Lake View for Wrigley Field, but they don’t know Lake View for all the theater, culture and arts. We also have a large gay and lesbian community, and people know about that, but they don’t think of Lake View as a night out at the theater.”