Exclusive Photos And Video From Inside The Hillard Theater

[Dan Alaimo]

Several thoughts:
* When I was being relocated to Cleveland in the early '80s by HBJ Publications, a group editor and his wife who we were friendly with took us on a tour of the town, dinner, drinks at a local pub, and a midnight showing at the Hilliard of the Rocky Horror Show. We eventually bought our first house a few blocks away, although the theater played no part in decision. Nonetheless, every day for a decade I saw the sad decline of the place.
* In its condition in 2017, there was no option but to tear it down, but as has been demonstrated here, it shouldn't have come to that point. If restoration efforts had been made at an earlier time, it would still be a part of Lakewood's cultural fabric.
* The removal of parking was a major factor in its decline. I see this all over town. To our planners and developers, parking seems optional. I walk a lot in this City but not everywhere. With apologies to Joni Mitchell, "to save paradise, we need a few more parking lots."
* There is one neighborhood cinema left in the area - the Capitol at Gordon Square. It's not in Lakewood, but it's all we have left. We go to the movies regularly and our first choice is always the Capitol, but the attendance I see there is often disappointing. It's not uncommon for us to be one of a handful in the room for a good movie. I urge everyone to check out the Capitol before going to AMC or Crocker. Parking can be a challenge, but it's never impossible. This weekend they are showing the Oscar short subject nominees which I always try to attend. They aren't for everyone, but I recommend them.

[Jim O'Bryan]

* There is one neighborhood cinema left in the area - the Capitol at Gordon Square. It's not in Lakewood, but it's all we have left. We go to the movies regularly and our first choice is always the Capitol, but the attendance I see there is often disappointing. It's not uncommon for us to be one of a handful in the room for a good movie. I urge everyone to check out the Capitol before going to AMC or Crocker. Parking can be a challenge, but it's never impossible. This weekend they are showing the Oscar short subject nominees which I always try to attend. They aren't for everyone, but I recommend them.

Dan

And the day after grants dry up for the Capitol Theater, it closes.

The Capitol Theater, is the same as the Westwood/Hillard was when they used it to convince you. Nothing more than a prop, in a movie set called Detroit Shoreway.

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[Dan Alaimo]

* There is one neighborhood cinema left in the area - the Capitol at Gordon Square. It's not in Lakewood, but it's all we have left. We go to the movies regularly and our first choice is always the Capitol, but the attendance I see there is often disappointing. It's not uncommon for us to be one of a handful in the room for a good movie. I urge everyone to check out the Capitol before going to AMC or Crocker. Parking can be a challenge, but it's never impossible. This weekend they are showing the Oscar short subject nominees which I always try to attend. They aren't for everyone, but I recommend them.

Dan

And the day after grants dry up for the Capitol Theater, it closes.

The Capitol Theater, is the same as the Westwood/Hillard was when they used it to convince you. Nothing more than a prop, in a movie set called Detroit Shoreway.

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I'm sure you're right. So I can only add, enjoy it while it's there and maybe help convince someone else there's a market for it around here.

[Terry Tekushan]

"Nothing more than a prop, in a movie set called Detroit Shoreway."

I think the same can be said of every organized commercial development out there. Particularly it can be said of almost any situation where public projection of private goals is involved.

When I visualize a Movie Set development I don't see Detroit Shoreway at all. I see Crocker park.

Critics of suburban development have used these kinds of terms for a long time. Every mall in the country is a movie set. And when the push from Corporate changes direction, the malls cease to exist too.

As Tim Liston linked to it, I highly recommend Charles Hugh Smiths's article on what has become the great eraser of local Main Street commercial districts and local economies in general: The plantation economy.

"Loving Our Servitude In America's Plantation Economy"

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb17/pla ... e2-17.html

This article couldn't have come a more appropriate time.

If the concern is over grants and subsidies the Big Corporate is subsidized too, but in myriad of different ways.
If, in the face of this corporate monocultural development, a few government subsidy programs and philanthropic grants help push back against it, what of it? I just don't see this sort funding as necessarily making a district a Movie Set especially if the implication is that the corporate is Real.

Maybe Gordon Square development is competition to Lakewood's local efforts but I see Crocker Park and Avon developments of various types as an effort to exterminate the old and Real model altogether. We have plenty of evidence for that.

The individuals I know in the Detroit Shoreway area have all put their personal monies and energies on the line for their goals. They can be bankrupted by circumstances just like anyone else. They are Real as far as I can tell. They are not building props.

This is not to say that Gordon Square is above criticism.
Regarding the Capitol Theater, it's failures may be that the target movie audience is sitting in multi-box cinemas in Avon. And the small audience for art film is in University Circle. Or the Cedar Lee. This was my whole point about not trying to compete with the corporate faire.

Regardless, sitting in a near empty theater while simultaneously having difficulty finding parking because the area is so busy tells us something.

I've often wondered why the excellent Near West Theater wasn't offered the Capitol. They were on a 3rd floor at St. Patricks on Bridge Avenue. The Capitol would hardly be slumming it should they have adopted it. They had something like a $30 million fundraiser and built a new space a few hundred feet from the Capitol for about $7.3 million. You could do plenty of customizing of the Capitol for that kind of money I would think. It isn't that it's a theater, but what they are doing with it, IMO.

Anyway, God only knows where the line between Movie Set and Real lies. Shakespeare said that "All The World's A Stage" and it still is news. We all do our own acts and bring our own props.

All the skills and energy we summon and all those we engage to realize our goals serve a purpose and with any luck they should serve our communities as well. I can't begrudge those who actually do that- present company included (particularly!).

The Hilliard is gone now. For my part, we had a plan for our particular "prop" to serve the community for now and in the future, in large part because of it being in this particular community and that certain aspects of the building itself being priceless. Obviously there was no guaranty of success. Yet I mourn the loss of actualizing it for better or for worse.

I fully understand wherever one discovers a quiet greatness and then conceive a way to share it with the world, a person can come off as some sort of lunatic. Ray Shepardson comes up as an iconic example. I only wish I had that level of sustainable energy to take that risk alone.

In both people and their works, where quiet greatness is found it's just as often unrewarded by the culture at large. It doesn't matter what technicalities financed their works. It doesn't mean the greatness isn't there.

I don't know. Perhaps those of quiet greatness are most substantive and authentic when they aren't noticed at all. But I suspect they built the world.

[Jim O'Bryan]

"Nothing more than a prop, in a movie set called Detroit Shoreway."

I think the same can be said of every organized commercial development out there. Particularly it can be said of almost any situation where public projection of private goals is involved.

When I visualize a Movie Set development I don't see Detroit Shoreway at all. I see Crocker park.

Terry

Funny, when I look to Crocker Park, I see Lakewood in the early years. Most homes in Lakewood were built in a 20 year period. A new development, near the end of the railroad.

I have an 1885 map of the county, with so many suburbs laid out as Crocker Park is now.

When I say movie set, I refer to almost all of "the hip" areas in the city. Detroit Shoreway, Slavic Village, Collinwood, etc. Where if you go more than a block off the "cool" area you are in a ghost town, or worse. The CDC's theme song is, "give artist property, soon will follow coffee shops, then galleries and theaters, and then big development. If you go back and look at the videos of the first three LakewoodAlive programs you will see this repeated three times. Look at "Hingetown" two blocks owned by one person. Rising Star, Tea House, Power Station Gallery, and now condos. Slavic Village, coffee shops and galleries, soon followed by...

While Crocker Park is owned by a developer, the other examples are propped up with public dollars, and grants. A very big difference in my mind.

For all of the people that raise Capitol Theater a success should also realize, it is a fabrication, and illusion to trick and confuse. Not to save, and use.

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