Planned South Shore Entertainment Center Gets Key City Approvals

SOUTH SHORE — Plans for a South Shore entertainment center nearly a decade in the making recently advanced with approvals from the city’s zoning board, and its developer says she hopes to open the center at 71st Street and Jeffery Boulevard by the end of 2026.

Developer South Shore Commercial Properties is planning a full-service Creole restaurant; a seven-screen, dine-in cinema; an eight-lane bowling alley and an events space at 7052 S. Jeffery Blvd.

The services will be operated in-house by the developer’s affiliate company, Inner City Entertainment. The site is currently home to the former Jeffery Theater and Urban Partnership Bank buildings, which will be demolished to build the complex.

The project passed several hurdles at the Zoning Board of Appeals Oct. 18, including approvals for a public place of amusement license and zoning variations related to the building’s status as a “transit-served location.”

With the board’s approvals, the developer will apply for a new demolition permit “as soon as possible,” said developer Alisa Starks, a South Shore resident and owner of Inner City Entertainment.

Pending the permit approval, demolition and groundbreaking are expected in the spring, while a grand opening is targeted for late 2026, Starks said. The project was formally announced in 2017, after word of the concept leaked in 2015.

“It just obviously took a lot more time to get done because when the pandemic occurred, [restaurants, cinemas, bowling alleys and event spaces] weren’t operating for years,” Starks said. “It’s just been a longer process to maneuver it through financing and all the cost increases. All of that has had an impact on getting it done.”

Project costs have doubled from pre-pandemic estimates, though Starks declined to say what the current estimates were. She estimated the costs at $20.5 million in 2021.

Inner City Entertainment owns the parking lots across from the project site, which are planned to be used for the center, Starks told Block Club in 2021.

Zoning board chair Brian Sanchez noted support for the project from Ald. Desmon Yancy (5th), the South Shore Chamber, South Shore Works and residents of the Jackson Park Highlands landmark district, among others.

“We need more ways that we can have a [walkable] community in South Shore — places that we can spend our money within the community, where we can feel safe and congregate together without fear of violence,” South Shore resident Valerie Batteast said at the meeting.

Starks does not plan to preserve aspects of the Jeffery Theater or the former bank, she said. The buildings have deteriorated to the point where “not much is salvageable,” she told Block Club Thursday.

The city issued a demolition permit for the site in 2020, but that permit was later voided, said Peter Strazzabosco, spokesperson for the city’s Department of Planning and Development. A 90-day demolition delay would be triggered with a new demolition permit application, he said.

The city delays demolition permits for architecturally significant buildings for up to 90 days, so the zoning department can “explore options” for preservation. The hold triggered by the 2020 permit expired without the city designating the site as a Chicago Landmark.

Nonprofit Preservation Chicago placed the Jeffery Theater on its list of Chicago’s “most endangered” buildings in 2023.

“At one point I had hoped I could [locate the center in the existing buildings], but it didn’t work out,” Starks told the zoning board this month.

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