Update: Regal Mile Studios project scrapped?
The project’s website has vanished and questions arise if this was even real
It looks like the Regal Mile Studios project, which was supposed to anchor the area around 79th and Stony Island on the South Side, has quietly been scrapped.
At Wednesday’s Chicago City Council meeting, businessman Jerald Gary spoke during the public comment portion, saying his plans for the renovation of the long-dormant Avalon Regal Theater he bought in 2014 two blocks from the still-vacant site has stalled due to the city and 8th Ward Alderwoman Michelle Harris, whose ward where the site – and this writer – resides in. He’s suing both, claiming the Regal Mile Studios project was “fake” and infringed on his IP, stating the city and Harris misled residents into thinking hundreds of jobs would be created through this project.
Built in 1927 and originally a movie theater converted into a church in the 1970s, the Avalon Theater became Avalon Regal in 1987 and transformed into a live performance venue for top R&B acts and comedians. The building unexpectedly closed in 2008, and Gary hopes to reopen the venue in 2027 for its 100th anniversary.
A visit to the Regal Mile Studios website reveals it has been scrubbed of all content. Depending on your web browser, it may redirect you to a warning message indicating that the site is dangerous to visit (you can view the archived version here). According to a Whois lookup, the site was last updated on December 13, 2024, and currently has the status “client transfer prohibited.” A Wayback Machine search showed the site changed into a placeholder in January 2024.
The project was announced with great fanfare in February 2023, with a groundbreaking event for the $100 million project attended by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, hoping to revitalize the South Shore neighborhood and surrounding areas with a fall 2024 opening, touting it as “The Hollywood Of The Midwest.” Partners in the project included Id8 Ventures, headed by The Chi producer Derek Dudley; Loop Capital; and Alpco Ventures, among others.
But just two weeks after the project was announced, Lightfoot lost her re-election bid and was succeeded by Brandon Johnson after he won the general election. Since the announcement, no work has been done on the site except for a fence erected around the property. Regal Mile Studios hasn’t been a priority for the Johnson Administration or Harris.
Meanwhile, another studio project – announced three months later on the Northwest Side called The Fields Studios, is already open and running. An internet search of Regal Mile Studios provided very little except news articles from the day the project was announced, with Google no longer listing the Regal Mile Studio’s website.
These are quite serious allegations, and you wonder why Lightfoot and Harris would go through all of this trouble to keep another businessman from having his successful project in the same area. Still, the presumed collapse of the Regal Mile Studios project is yet another blow to an area that needs economic development, and you can thank the trademark bureaucratic bungling Chicago is all too well known for.