A Phony License? Who Knew?
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The license for the tiny space at 3209 N. Halsted, WNEP’s home for more than three years, had been held by its landlord, Wellington Properties, in the name of TurnAround Productions, a now inactive theater company. Earlier this year, says WNEP founder Don Hall, the two companies agreed that the license would be renewed in WNEP’s name. Hall says he filled out the paperwork for that change and sent it to the landlord to complete and turn in to the city. He also says that WNEP made payments to the landlord to cover the license fee. Then he waited a couple months for the certificate to arrive. This spring, “when I realized that our license was about to expire, I called the Department of Revenue,” Hall says. “I explained the situation–that we needed a current license and as far as I knew it was all applied for and paid for, and a couple days later we got the license in the mail. I don’t remember who sent it to us. I don’t keep the envelopes. I just know I opened up one of our many pieces of mail and there was the PPA license. It was pink and had a city seal on it. I was really excited. I went out and bought a nice little glass frame and hung it up.”
“No one counterfeited a PPA,” he insists. “It’s a $350 license, not a bank breaker. We didn’t go out and buy it on the underground PPA black market. If there’s going to be a charge of counterfeit, then someone needs to be charged, and there needs to be a court date–or there needs to be a retraction. We haven’t been charged with anything.” Still, his response has been more poodle than pit bull: “Where that license came from is less of a concern for me than making sure we continue to do shows,” he says. “As far as I’m concerned the point is moot.”
Metropolis Performing Arts Centre is either a huge success or a big flop, depending on whom you ask. Both opinions were voiced at a public hearing last month to consider whether Arlington Heights should buy the three-year-old theater. It’s been put on the block by developer Mark Anderson of Banbury Properties, who conceived of it as a profit-making enterprise and ran it that way for two years before going nonprofit. He’s named a price of $2.75 million and set a January deadline for the town’s “right of first refusal.” The village already kicked in $2.35 million in TIF funds for the theater’s construction, so it could wind up paying in excess of $5 million for a mere portion of the building: Anderson’s selling just the main-floor lobby, auditorium, and dressing rooms, together with the classrooms and the theater’s office space on the floor above–all of which Metropolis has been renting for $1 a year. His company would continue to own the rest of the center, including the bar and restaurant that serve theater patrons at intermission, a second-floor ballroom, and two additional floors of rental offices.
