Rooting for the Big Guy
Why local music fans should be glad Jam won the battle for the Uptown Theatre
By Miles Raymer
August 7, 2008, excerpted from the Chicago Reader.
On July 29 the city ordered the Uptown Theatre onto the auction block, and the sale had one immediately obvious benefit—it eliminated the tangle of owners, partial owners, mortgages, and liens surrounding the property and made it clear who’s actually responsible for the place. Chicago-based Jam Productions won with a bid of $3.2 million—and surprisingly, the only other bid accepted was from the holder of the first mortgage, not from one of Jam’s competitors.
A benefit that’s perhaps less obvious is that the sale prevents any of those competitors—notably Clear Channel spin-off Live Nation, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits organizer C3 Presents, or Coachella producer AEG Live—from controlling a little more of the Chicago concert landscape.
For complete article and commentary, go to Chicago Reader.
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