For a vacant movie theater, the Pikes has had a lot of coming attractions advertised on its marquee this summer.
Getting the marquee treatment have been concerts staged at other venues in Pikesville as part of a long-range plan to renovate the Pikes as a performing arts center. The Pikes itself is in no condition to stage any sort of event these days, but that could all change in the next few years.
"Our mission is to present performing artists, with an emphasis on emerging and mid-career artists," says Aimee Adashek, executive director of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Arts Foundation, the nonprofit group hoping to move forward with a $2 million plan to renovate the existing Pikes theater as a facility for theater, film, music, dance and the visual arts.
"There is nothing like this center in Baltimore. It'll be a showcase for the best our region has to offer," she continues. "We're creating a space that will have a 400-seat theater, as well as a lobby that can accommodate 400 people."
Mark Beck, the project's architect, says the facility will serve multiple functions. "For instance, the lobby will be set up to double as an art gallery," he says, adding that the size and flexibility of the theater will make it ideal for events too large for most college theaters but too small for a venue like the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.
Ms. Adashek cites two additional features of the theater that should make it an appealing venue: a stage floor suitable for dance companies, and the facility's ability to provide ample rehearsal space to local performing groups that may currently be in cramped quarters.
As for whether the new theater will, in effect, "steal" performing groups from other local venues, she responds, "No, because there is an awful lot of programming to go around."
Although she says a lot of fund-raising remains to be done before the construction go-ahead can be given, Ms. Adashek is confident the Pikes' marquee will one day announce events at the theater itself.
The letters used for all these marquee blurbs, incidentally, are themselves part of the fund-raising effort. For a $5 contribution you can adopt a plastic letter. Many of these letters have been newly purchased, but many others are original to the theater. Found dusty, broken and littering the theater's lobby floor, the abandoned letters have been lovingly glued back together by some of the foundation's 100 volunteers.
Besides the Adopt-a-Letter campaign, the enterprising Ms. Adashek says potential donors may, for a price, have their names put on everything from individual theater seats to the theater itself.
How much would it cost to have the theater named for you?
A cool million, give or take.
If that seems like a lot of money for the name exposure on the marquee of a renamed theater, Ms. Adashek quickly points out that 48,000 vehicles pass by on Reisterstown Road every day. One has to lean forward to hear her say this, because some of those 48,000 vehicles are roaring past at the moment.
A few minutes later, with a big yellow flashlight in hand, Ms. Adashek heads into a theater that is black from both grime and lack of electricity. Although she says the building is still structurally sound, it's filthy. That's not surprising, considering the last picture show at the Pikes hit the screen more than a decade ago.
Ms. Adashek's flashlight tour is a bit like a tour of a haunted house. Poking about in the dark auditorium, with its seeming acres of empty seats, one imagines the generations of moviegoers who had their first dates here (or, for that matter, their last dates).
Behind the screen, near a rear exit, one can see a plaster wall that stands out from the brick walls around it. Like an archaeological discovery, this patched wall marks the spot where an oil boiler blew up during a March 1968 screening of "The Graduate." Police evacuated 300 patrons during that traumatic incident.
Upstairs, two old projectors sit idle. Next to them is the record player used to waft music into the auditorium before the features. Blowing dust off the sole surviving record album, one finds that its "101 Strings Gold Award Hits" include selections from "Hair." Somehow it seems a touchingly pathetic reminder of suburban hipness circa the late '60s.
The long effort to get the building spruced up has gained momentum in recent years, but Ms. Adashek acknowledges the process has taken longer than some would like. Formed in 1991 to develop a multiuse arts center, the foundation she heads leases the Pikes for a token fee from Baltimore County, which bought the building for $800,000 in 1992.
From the county's perspective, a rejuvenated Pikes is part of a larger effort to refurbish the Reisterstown Road business corridor in Pikesville. Last year, the county completed a $1 million street-scape project along four blocks of Reisterstown Road. New sidewalks, park benches, planters, trash cans and even a sculpture by Baltimore sculptor Rodney Carroll in a mini-park setting improved the area's appearance. And, in fact, it has started to attract new restaurants and shops.
"The business community is using the arts to help revive the business community," Ms. Adashek says of the pragmatic financial advantages of having a revived theater. There are 19 restaurants in the immediate neighborhood, for instance, and presumably Pikes theater patrons sated on cultural offerings would hit the street still hungry for dessert.
"The reuse of the Pikes is all part of the bigger picture and package" as a magnet for attracting business to the area, concurs Baltimore County Councilman Melvin G. Mintz, D-2nd.
"There's a need for the type of facility the Pikes will be."
The process of reviving the Pikes theater hasn't been easy, or short. For the past several years, the foundation, its consultants, local politicians and community residents have all offered input -- and sometimes disagreed -- on some basic issues: whether to bring the theater back as a movies-only facility, even if on an interim basis; whether to raze the structure and build from
scratch; whether to save the facade and put a new auditorium behind it. The foundation even had to come to terms with its name, changing it from the Pikesville Cultural Arts Foundation to the Greater Baltimore Cultural Arts Foundation to stress the theater's importance to the metro area has a whole.
"I know there's some impatience with how long this has taken," Councilman Mintz acknowledges. "I wanted it to be opened yesterday."
The current plans call for preserving the facade of the 650-seat theater, built in 1937, in an art-deco-descended style known as streamline moderne. This is most pronounced in the beige brick exterior's sleekly curving upper walls.
Asked if she considers that facade of architectural importance and worth saving, Ms. Adashek gives a yes and no answer.
"I have a strong interest in preserving our cultural heritage, but I also have to ask if this is a beautiful example of art deco. No, it's not. It was a very inexpensive [to build] suburban theater. . . . This is not the Senator and even in its heyday was not the Senator."
Community sentiment and the art deco touches on the facade prompted the foundation to preserve it. The inside of the theater, however, will be substantially rebuilt, with a new lobby occupying much of the existing auditorium, and a new 400-seat theater constructed on the north side of the building and slightly extending onto the existing parking lot. Final architectural plans have yet to be released.
On the fund-raising front, the project got a major boost during the 1994 legislative session when the Maryland General Assembly approved a $500,000 bond bill for renovation of the Pikes. Ms. Adashek says private individuals have so far contributed $140,000. She estimates it will take another year to reach the $2 million fund-raising goal, followed by approximately 14 months for construction.
Already staging events around Pikesville before its own Pikes theater stage is a reality, the foundation last winter presented a family performance series in the ballroom of the Pikesville Hilton. This summer it has worked in conjunction with Maryland Art Place to put visual arts displays in local storefront windows and also inside the lobby doors of the Pikes. And after starting a summer concert series in 1993, the foundation expanded its scope this summer with Thursday evening jazz, folk and children's concerts at the Maryland National Guard Armory, St. Mark's-on-the-Hill Meeting Hall and the courtyard of the Maryland State Police headquarters.
CONCERTS AT THE PIKES
Remaining concerts in the series are:
* Aug. 18: Terra Nova gives a folk concert at 7:30 p.m. in the courtyard of the Maryland State Police headquarters, 1201 Reisterstown Road. Admission is $3 for adults, $2 for members of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Arts Foundation, $1 for senior citizens and students with ID, free for GBCAF senior and student members and for those 18 and under.
* Aug. 24-25: Shakespeare on Wheels gives a free performance of "Hamlet" on both evenings at 7:30 p.m. at the Maryland National Guard Armory.
For more information, call (410) 653-2787.