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.
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Live Nation, C3, and AEG are all national or multinational companies, without Jam’s inherent interest in the health of the local music scene. Though Jam has relationships with venues all over the U.S. and produces events in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and downstate Illinois, most of its shows happen in Chicago. It owns the Park West, the Vic, and the Riviera and works with smaller clubs like Double Door, Schubas, Metro, Martyrs’, Beat Kitchen, and Subterranean. Of course Jam made its share of enemies when it was the big kid on the Chicago playground, before the Telecommunications Act of 1996 cleared the way for the consolidation of media companies, but now it looks like a scrappy underdog.
In fact it’s a bit of a shock that Jam won the theater, since the city seemed to have another favorite. Mary Ann Smith, alderman for the 48th Ward, told the Sun-Times‘s Jim DeRogatis in April, “I have a deep-seated hope that Live Nation and their folks will prevail.” And in May the city’s housing court insisted on its right to impose requirements on the sale that Jam claimed were tailored to Live Nation’s advantage. Mickelson has called those requirements “onerous”—the new owner has to place $5 million in an escrow account within 30 days and submit a budget and financing plan within 90—but also told Crain’s that they probably scared away other bidders. (Calls to Live Nation for this story had not been returned at press time.)
Jam produced Lollapalooza’s Chicago stops back when it was a much smaller, one-day touring event, and “never had noncompete agreements with the acts,” says Mickelson. “Nor did we have a contract that said Jam had to be the promoter of any other shows of those same acts which occurred on or around the date.” One has to wonder if Jam, put in the same position as C3, would exert the same stresses on the scene. It does much of its business with many of the same clubs now getting starved by Lollapalooza.
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