Riverside Theatre ready to welcome audiences to new Iowa City home

IOWA CITY — An empty building on the downtown Ped Mall, home most recently to trespassers and their graffiti, is nearing the finish line on a dramatic transformation.

On Feb. 4, the three-story space at 119 E. College St., in what’s known as the Crescent Block, will open as the new home of Riverside Theatre. Audiences will step through the former door of the Soap Opera and into a long hallway with exposed brick and woodwork that hearkens to the building’s 19th century beginnings.

At the front are the box office and a stairway, but the ground-floor hallway also continues toward the back of the building, with benches and an elevator midway to take audience members to the third floor. There, they will step into a gathering space triple the size of the former N. Gilbert Street home, and large enough to accommodate cabaret performances, opera on tap and pre- and post-show salons.

Next Stage

What: Riverside Theatre, 119 E. College St., Iowa City

Play: “Eden Prairie, 1971,” Feb. 4 (invited audience), open to public Feb. 5 to 20; riversidetheatre.org/eden-prairie-1971

Project scope: riversidetheatre.org/nextstage/

Financial details: riversidetheatre.org/financial-goals/

The new lobby opens to a state-of-the-art, 150-seat theater, up from 118 capacity at the former site. Designed for versatility, seating and the playing space can be configured in any way imaginable to bring the audience close to the action, thus preserving and enhancing the intimate feel that’s been a hallmark of Riverside Theatre throughout its 40-year history.

Patrons who choose take the stairs will pass through the second floor, but won’t have access to the area containing cast and crew amenities, from a conference room and dressing rooms, to a green room with a kitchenette and stacked washer and dryer, as well as a spiral staircase for quick trips to the backstage area one floor up. However, the elevator also makes all floors accessible for cast, crew and audience members with mobility issues — something Riverside’s former home couldn’t offer.

Everything inside the Crescent Building is clean and bright, with a modern industrial feel that doesn’t cover up the past — including the faded painting of an advertisement for Ayer’s Pills for the Liver on the far side of the theater — or flaws, like chipped or missing bricks and wood patches in the upstairs lobby’s wood floor.

“We're not hiding the changes that we've made, we’re not pretending that all this is original. So you can kind of clearly see the history and the new,” said Adam Knight, 42, of Iowa City, Riverside’s producing artistic director since 2018.

“This is a building that's 140 years old,” he said. “I think it was first opened in the 1880s … so these bricks are really old.”

On a Jan. 19 Gazette walk-through, he also pointed out such fascinating features as a curved design in the bricks, uncovered during the renovation process.

"We wanted to preserve as much as possible and better tell the story of a place that was forgotten, that now has life again,“ he said.

That new life will launch with the world premiere of “Eden Prairie, 1971,” by Mat Smart of Brooklyn, N.Y., one of Knight’s longtime friends and collaborators, dating to their college days and subsequent work in New York’s theater scene.

And following a time-honored New York theater tradition, the show is opening after five preview performances, to give the playwright, actors and technicians the chance to let the new play breathe and find its legs with an audience.

Another discovery seems almost prophetic.

“Our first preview here is 40 years to the day of our first-ever performance. Jan. 27, 1982, was the first performance of ‘The Lesson,’ directed by Bruce Wheaton, featuring Ron Clark and Jody Hovland, and it was at the old Armory.

“As soon as I found that out, it felt very meaningful,” Knight said. “Just what that moment must have been — to open this theater and have your first audience — and how terrifying and exciting it was. We're in a similar boat now. We're going through all these hoops to get this building ready, and then when those lights go down, it's out of our hands — telling a story again in the dark. That's very exciting.”

It’s been the glimmer of hope running parallel to pandemic that in June 2020 shut the doors on the professional theater troupe’s former home at 213 N. Gilbert St.

Timeline

The wheels started turning even before pandemic pauses hit home as the Tailwind Group — a real estate acquisition, development and management organization based in Mankato, Minn. — began reimagining three 19th century buildings along E. College Street as part of its $54.4 million revitalization project. Since 2017, Tailwind Group has purchased all the buildings from 109 to 127 E. College St. for historic preservation and renovation.

Neumann Monson Architects in Iowa City has been working with Tailwind on the redevelopment project, and when founder Kevin Monson found out in spring 2020 that Riverside was considering leaving Gilbert Street even before the pandemic closed the doors, he approached Knight about the E. College Street site. That led to a series of discussions, initial plans and the feasibility of embarking on the theater’s first capital campaign in 20 years.

With Neumann Monson’s long history of working with Riverside Theatre, including designing the outdoor Festival Stage in Lower City Park, Monson was especially pleased to see Riverside take a leap of faith into the Crescent Block Building.

“We’ve had a special place for Riverside Theatre,” said Monson, 70, of rural Iowa City. "It’s a great gem that we have in Iowa City, to have a professional theater company here in our community. It’s so important to our culture and our community to have such a talented group of people working in it and giving jobs to our great acting force. It’s super. …

“We’ve always had in our mind, how do we help Riverside Theatre get into a better location (with) more flexibility. … So as we were working with Tailwind Group and putting together a series of studies, Riverside Theatre quickly came to mind.”

It’s move also is in line with current theatrical trends.

“Looking at other entertainment venues around the country, this kind of a little more gritty sort of space that can be flexible and customized for each production certainly was very exciting to us,” Monson said, citing project architect Parker Dobberstein and Jillian Riggan, who led the interior design efforts, as doing the “heavy lifting” with the Riverside project.

Knight also was thrilled with the collaborative spirit of the project.

“We had the luxury of being involved in every step of this process, and especially in the last month, starting to work in here, we're just learning what the space wants, and that's always a little different from what how we thought it was going to work,” he said. “So this month has been instrumental in getting the space right, and we're still going to be learning over the next few months and still making adjustments.”

Knight credits Monson with leading the way.

“Who walks into a space like this, which was covered in graffiti, which was just kind of an abandoned third floor of a sort of a building and says, ‘I think this could be a theater.’ His vision really drove the whole process from that first phone call that I had with him, where he pitched the idea to me,” Knight said. “And then I brought the conversation to our executive committee and then that circle kept widening and widening until by the fall of 2020, we were ready to move forward.”

Monson, however, turns the spotlight onto the Tailwind Group.

“This wouldn’t be possible without the vision of the Tailwind Group, and their leadership in making this happen,” he said, adding that the economic driver is The Nest, an 11-story apartment building under constructions behind the historic store fronts, creating the capital needed for the restoration projects.

Tailwind also contributed $900,000 toward the Riverside project, easing the theater’s fundraising burden for its $1.82 million capital campaign. Knight expects that mark to be reached by the Feb. 4 opening night performance.

Monson further cited Tailwind’s efforts to work with the city “to save all of those store fronts on College Street and put them into landmark status so they can never be torn down, so they’re preserved for the history and fulfillment of Iowa City.”

The various phases involved working with the city’s historic preservation and zoning groups, as well as the City Council. Preliminary support from the council’s economic development committee came in early December 2020, followed by a unanimous green light from the City Council in January 2021.

“All along the way, everyone recognized the beautiful opportunity it would be for everyone to get Riverside Theatre down in the heart of our community, to really reinforce Iowa City being the greatest little city for the arts,” Monson said.

“It couldn’t get any better, with FilmScene across the street and down the block, with our restaurants, with our public library and with the Englert Theatre,” Monson noted. “I think it just adds life to our community and something that most communities could not pull off. But here we are — we’re going to do it.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com