"I've never really seen an empty building I didn't like," says local developer Andrew Volna. In the case of the vacant
Hollywood Theater in northeast Minneapolis, the buliding held extra appeal: Volna had also seen it in use, as a kid growing up in the neighborhood.
In 2008 Volna hired architects at
City Desk Studio to draw up plans for renovating the 1935 landmark, one of a handful of surviving Art Deco theaters by the legendary architecture firm
Liebenberg and Kaplan. After shelving the plans as the recession took hold, Volna puts the chances he'll eventually pursue the project at 50-50.
The idea of reviving the Hollywood has long bedazzled and bedeviled city officials and neighborhood activists. The City of Minneapolis bought the building in 1993; efforts toward renovation have percolated ever since, but still the building sits empty on a popular stretch of
Johnson Street.
While another Minneapolis theater bearing the Liebenberg and Kaplan
stamp, the
Varsity in Dinkytown, has made relatively seamless
transitions from movie house to photo studio to (now) busy nightclub, that building has one advantage over the Hollywood: "It never had a seive for a
roof," says Volna.
Volna envisions a re-use for the Hollywood along the lines of the classic RayVic gas station on East Hennepin Avenue, which he renovated as office space for the web development firm
Clockwork.
Volna's
other redevelopment efforts on Minneapolis' East Side include the buliding on little-known Winter Street NE that houses his successful digital media manufacturing business,
Noiseland Industries.
Source: Andrew Volna, Apiary LLC
Writer: Chris Steller