UPTOWN — A colorful mural adorning the facade of a historical Uptown building is coming down this weekend as the nonprofit that owns the building gears up for a major renovation.
The youth circus arts nonprofit CircEsteem is inviting neighbors to its headquarters 2 p.m. Saturday at 4730 N. Sheridan Road, when workers will begin to take down the mosaic mural titled “I Will …” before portions of it are eventually repurposed.
CircEsteem plans to transform the Lakeside Theater building, which dates back to 1914, into a performing arts hub and youth center. Lakeside Theater was Uptown’s first movie house and is among the buildings included in the Uptown Square historic district.
Part of the roughly $6.25 million project includes adding windows to the storefront, which were covered up at one point. The mural was installed in 2006 under the building’s previous owner and with help from neighborhood kids.
The decision to remove the mural was not an easy one, said Patty Aikonedo, director of community outreach at CircEsteem. But it will help the group restore its building to its 1910s movie house roots while creating a state-of-the-art performance center and neighborhood attraction, she said.
The mural will be carefully removed and repurposed in some to-be-determined fashion in the renovated facility, Aikonedo said.
“It doesn’t entirely encapsulate the excitement and energy going on in CircEsteem,” Aikonedo said of the building’s current facade. “We want the community to know what is going on behind the scenes at CircEsteem, to see how talented our kids are.”
CircEsteem, founded in 2001, helps kids learn self-esteem and artistic expression through the practice of circus arts. It holds after-school programs and workshops throughout the city, as well as programs and performances from its Sheridan Road headquarters.
For most of its existence, CircEsteem shared space in the building at 4730 N. Sheridan Road with youth empowerment agency Alternatives Inc. Thanks to an anonymous donation, CircEsteem was able to buy the building from Alternatives in August.
Around that same time, CircEsteem was awarded $3.7 million in community grants from the city for the restoration of the building.
The project will restore the building while expanding its interior performing arts space.
The performance area will be modernized and expanded by a “couple thousand square feet,” Aikonedo said. The library and resource center will also be expanded.
The building’s terra cotta pieces and brick facade will be rehabbed, and large windows will be added to the front facade, similar to how the building appeared in its earliest days.
The “I Will …” mural was commissioned by Alternatives, which brought in artist Tracy Van Duinen for the project. It was unveiled in 2006, covering much of the building’s front facade in colorful tiles depicting children and including words of encouragement, according to a Tribune article from that year.
Van Duinen also worked with local kids to create the murals in the DuSable Lake Shore Drive underpasses at Foster and Bryn Mawr avenues. The murals were part of a “restorative justice” project that expunged criminal records for the teens who helped in the project, Van Duinen said.
The artist said he was “obviously saddened that a community mural created by neighborhood children is being destroyed” and that it won’t be easy to salvage pieces of the project.
“The reality is it’s their building and they can do what they want with it,” Van Duinen said. “It was a great project that actually helped a lot of teenagers restore a wrong and channel their energy in a constructive manner and beautify their community.”
Alternatives Inc. has relocated to Washington Park after selling its Uptown building, though it still retains office space on the North Side, development director Monica George said. She appreciates CircEsteem is working to repurpose the mural and give some pieces to the community, she said.
“The community engagement piece is really lovely,” George said. “I’m excited to see the next iteration.”
On Saturday, neighbors and art lovers can take in the mural one last time and even take home portions of the art installation. Larger portions of the mural will be saved for eventual re-use in the building, Aikonedo said.
The mural is coming down ahead of planned groundbreaking at the building in April or May.
CircEsteem has $5 million secured for the project thanks to the community grant, funding from an Uptown tax incremental financing district and the anonymous donor, Aikonedo said. Organizers want to raise about $1 million more for the project. To donate, click here.
The renovated building is slated to debut summer 2024, becoming the latest cultural attraction in Uptown’s historic district.
“One of our values is making CircEsteem a hub, a safe space in the community,” Aikonedo said. The building “is going to be a way for us to a pulse in the Uptown community.”
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