Victoria Theater

AM New York today examines the controversy surrounding Harlem's shuttered Victoria Theater:

Local developer Steve Williams of Danforth Development Partners, LLC, wants to transform the 1917 burlesque theater into a 30-story condo/hotel, cutting up the ornate 2, 400-seat theater into two mini-theaters while preserving the facade and parts of the lobby.

Neighborhood activists argue that the Thomas Lamb-designer theater shoud be restored to its original grandeur.  read more »

The fight for Harlem’s Victoria Theater began back in December of 2005, when 11 developers submitted bids to convert the shuttered vaudeville house into a mixed-use cultural building. The board of the Harlem Community Development Corporation, which was chaired at the time by Democratic Assemblyman Keith Wright, narrowed the choices down to two firms.

But, according to The New York Times, the Pataki administration resisted, favoring another developer, Apollo Real Estate Advisers, which offered more money for the development rights and also happened to have strong ties to the Republican governor.

Mr. Wright lost his chairmanship a little while later—because of the dispute, according to an aide­­--but he ended up getting his way today. The Empire State Development Corporation, now controlled by appointees of the Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer, announced that one of the two firms selected by the Harlem Community Development Corporation, Danforth Development Partners LLC, had won the conditional right to redevelop the 1917 theater on 125th Street into a complex containing a hotel, 91 condominiums, and space for four arts organizations: the Classical Theatre of Harlem, the Harlem Arts Alliance, the Jazz Museum of Harlem, and the Apollo Theater Foundation. (The complex will, at 317,570 square feet, require a pretty large tower on top of the current building.)  read more »