Journal Reporter

The Des Plaines Theater Preservation Society will soon make its final pitch for public support in its campaign to save the old Des Plaines Theater building.

The group's last community information meeting about its proposal will take place at 7 p.m. on May 16 at the Des Plaines Public Library.

Society members will review their plans to acquire, restore, and renovate the theater. Audience members will then be invited to ask questions.

Posters and T-shirts promoting the effort will also be for sale during the event, which is the fifth in a series of community meetings held in past weeks throughout most of the city's eight wards.

According to Society spokesman Dan Dix, each meeting has drawn between 30 and 50 residents.

The Preservation Society says it can acquire the building, at no cost to the city or Des Plaines taxpayers, through the same process used when the city acquired properties for its $49 million downtown redevelopment plan.

Under the proposal, the City of Des Plaines would condemn the theater building, and then sell the property to Preserva-tion Society. With the city writing the mortgage and guaranteeing the loan, the Society would make the mortgage payments, renovate the theater, and operate the facility.

The property would revert to the city if the Society's efforts were unsuccessful.

The city council will meet on June 2 to vote on the group's proposal. At last month's meeting, the council split 3-3 on the plan, with two members absent.

The Mount Prospect National Bank, which operates facilities in downtown Mt. Prospect and North Barrington, is still eyeing the old theater building as the site for a new drive-through bank in downtown Des Plaines.

The bank's holding company, Northwest Suburban Bancorp, retains an option to buy the theater building and either tear it down or renovate it to make way for the new bank.

Those plans are currently on hold until the Des Plaines city council makes its decision.

"It's a little frustrating, but that's the way things work," said bank president John Eilering.

Eilering says the bank has no specific contingency plans for action, should the council vote to support the theater restoration plan. Still, Eilering says, regardless of the council's decision, the bank is "planning to move ahead" with its project.