A decade ago, when my oldest daughter was preparing for the road test to get her driver’s license, I took her to the parking lot of an abandoned movie theater at 62nd Street and Western Avenue. It was a familiar scene for her. When she was a small child, we’d go to see movies there until it closed in 2007.
My middle daughter hopes to get her driver’s license soon. On several occasions over the past year, I’ve given her driving lessons in the parking lot of the old Cinema 8 Lansing theater on Torrance Avenue in south suburban Lansing. We’d catch an occasional movie there, before it closed in 2020.
Next year, I’ll probably do some laps with my youngest daughter — who’s taking driver’s education classes now as a high school sophomore — in the parking lot of the old Cinema Chatham theater, which closed earlier this year. Located on 87th Street just off the Dan Ryan Expressway, the Chatham theater is the one I’ve frequented the most over the past 25 years. Losing it was a real gut punch.
Notice the pattern.
With no other drivers or pedestrians around, these lonely, forgotten multiplexes are great for young drivers to get comfortable behind the wheel. But they would also be great for their intended purpose: to watch movies.
Sadly, few theaters in Black spaces in the Chicago area survive for very long. I’ve been to all of them at one time or another, and practically all of them have met the same fate.
The most popular movie theater of my youth was attached to the old Evergreen Plaza shopping mall just outside the city at 95th Street and Western Avenue in suburban Evergreen Park. While the village was mostly white, the patrons of the theater and the mall — affectionately known in those days as “Ever Black” Plaza — were mostly Black. The theater was closed in the late 1990s.
Lincoln Mall Cinema in south suburban Matteson closed in 2001. The River Oaks theater locations in south suburban Calumet City were all closed by 2006. And the 10-screen theater on Roosevelt Road in North Lawndale on Chicago’s West Side was closed for good in 2018.
Limited economic power — or intentional disinvestment?
Some might view the demise of these theaters as evidence of the limited economic power of Black residents. But they’re wrong. I’d argue that it’s segregation and disinvestment that kills business in Black communities.
For decades, with neighborhoods and schools in and around Chicago, as the presence of Black residents and Black students have increased, others have fled. The same holds true for movie theaters, malls and restaurants — as the numbers of Black patrons increase, other groups simply stop coming.
It’s the reason why the Walmart on 95th Street in mostly white Evergreen Park and the Red Lobster a few miles west in majority-white Oak Lawn are largely patronized by Black folks.
Over the past 30 years, as the south suburbs became increasingly Black, the regional malls there suffered mightily. While Black residents embraced Lincoln Mall and River Oaks, others moved and took their dollars to the Orland Square Mall and other shopping destinations. Lincoln Mall was demolished, and River Oaks is barely hanging on.
Meanwhile, Black communities in the city and suburbs struggle to retain existing businesses and to attract investment. Some of the nation’s strongest brands — Walmart, CVS, Target, Walgreens and Whole Foods — have closed locations in Black neighborhoods.
AMC Theatres last month announced that it was reopening the shuttered ShowPlace Icon theater in the South Loop. An AMC official said the company has made it a priority to identify “popular and well-performing theaters in areas where we believe moviegoers are underserved.”
No place is more underserved than Black Chicago, but it all makes sense. Why should retailers locate in areas where no one outside those areas wants to live, dine, shop or send their kids to school?
Segregation is real. Racial fears are real. And their economic impact is almost entirely felt by the group being shunned. For Asian, Latino and white residents in metro Chicago, their highest segregation measurements are with Black residents, according to research from Brown University.
Across America, Black neighborhoods are the least likely to grow. Census data show just 35% of majority-Black census tracts nationwide increased in population from 1990 to 2020, compared to 63%, 69% and 73% of Latino, Asian and white census tracts, respectively. Things were much worse in Cook County, where just 11% of Black census tracts increased in population during that time.
Last month, Inner City Entertainment — the Black-owned company that opened the theaters in Chatham, North Lawndale and at 62nd and Western back in 1997 — won zoning approvals for an entertainment center at 71st Street and Jeffery Boulevard in South Shore. The venue will include a Creole restaurant, an eight-lane bowling alley and a seven-screen, dine-in cinema. It is planned to open in 2026, and I plan to be there as often as I can. It sounds like a wonderful place, but if Black South Side residents don’t show up, it might not survive.
Alden Loury is data projects editor for WBEZ and writes a column for the Sun-Times.
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