HOUSTON (AP) - In the 1940s and ’50s, the De Luxe Theater stood at the heart of the Fifth Ward, a thriving African-American community that produced Barbara Jordan, the congresswoman, and George Foreman, the boxer.
The Rev. Harvey Clemons can see past what is now the De Luxe’s gutted façade to the movie theater where he had his first kiss. Little wonder he still associates the De Luxe with excitement, and possibility.
Clemons, founder of the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corp., stood proudly among officials this week to announce the theater’s $5.5 million renovation as home to Texas Southern University’s drama department and linchpin in a broader redevelopment of what has become a crime-ridden neighborhood three miles northeast of downtown.
“It’s not a matter of persevering. It’s a matter of living,” Clemons said.
The theater’s reopening will help rejuvenate the Fifth Ward, said Mayor Pro Tem Jerry Davis, who represents the area on the City Council. Other upcoming projects include a branch library, 100 single-family homes funded through federal Hurricane Ike relief and 60 units of affordable housing.
“We’re getting Fifth Ward ready for the next century,” Davis told the Houston Chronicle (https://bit.ly/1jNVUa7 ).
The De Luxe will contain a traditional proscenium theater with 125 seats. The marquee and Moderne-style façade will be restored. A former furniture store next door will be transformed into classrooms and 3,500 square feet of retail space.
The redevelopment group hopes to attract a coffee shop and other businesses that would serve students and theater users, chief executive Kathy Payton said.
TSU’s drama department will use the De Luxe to teach students how to operate a theater, said Danille Taylor, dean of the school’s college of liberal arts and behavioral sciences. The university will not only present plays, but also concerts, films and workshops.
The university will send students into the Fifth Ward as volunteers, said Sunny Ohia, the school’s provost. The theater at 3300 Lyons is a five-mile drive, on U.S. 59, from TSU’s campus.
“As a university, we have to be engaged in the community around us,” Ohia said. “We will not let you down.”
Federal money from community redevelopment block grants will provide $5.25 million toward the project, said Neal Rackleff, the city’s director of housing and community development. The remaining $250,000 will come from the city’s Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone 18, part of a program that earmarks tax revenue for neighborhood improvements.
The redevelopment group acquired the building in 1998 and sold it to the city in 2009. Attempts to find a tenant failed until the university agreed to move in. TSU and the redevelopment groups’ leases will total $610,725 and $179,000, respectively, for five years’ rent. Both tenants will be able to offset their costs by offering the facility to community groups.
Without the partnerships from the school and redevelopment group, the renovation wouldn’t be happening, Houston Mayor Annise Parker said.
“This is about preserving Houston’s history. But for us to invest in our money, we have to be confident it will be a catalyst for other things,” she said.
It remains to be seen whether the renovation will have an incubator effect on the neighborhood. As the city learned with the East End’s Mercado Del Sol in the 1980s, a multimillion-dollar revival project can go wrong. The mall opened to similar optimism, but quickly went bankrupt and has since been converted into loft apartments.
The Fifth Ward - bounded by Buffalo Bayou, Jensen Drive, Liberty Road and Lockwood Drive - was settled in the 1800s by freed slaves.
“This is a neighborhood with a rich history - a rich legacy,” Clemons said.
Standing in front of the De Luxe Theater’s remains Monday, he looked across Lyons Avenue to a new mixed-use development. In the neighborhood’s heyday, he said, it was the site of a club that hosted blues guitarist B.B. King and singer Bobby “Blue” Bland.
The De Luxe Theater opened in 1941 and helped establish the neighborhood’s main street. Adrian Tubbs, a Fifth Ward resident, remembers Lyons as a place where the community came together.
“This was our downtown,” Tubbs said. “This is where we came for theater, for entertainment, for our shopping. This was ours.”
But the area began to deteriorate in the 1960s.
One blow was the construction of I-10 and U.S. 59, which strangled the neighborhood.
As the area declined, the theater was abandoned. Its last hurrah was in 1971, when arts patron Dominique de Menil fitted it out for “The De Luxe Show.” The exhibit featured paintings and sculptures by about 20 artists, including Kenneth Noland, Sam Gilliam and Richard Hunt.
The renovated theater will make Lyons Avenue a destination by attracting students and theater audiences, said Jarvis Johnson, a former City Council member. Businesses should move in to serve them. “Those businesses bring jobs. Jobs lessen the crime rate. Now you have sustainability,” he said.
Johnson pointed up Lyons Avenue to a group of men hanging out next to a convenience store. TSU’s presence will provide a better model for the students at nearby Young Men’s College Preparatory Academy, Johnson said.
“It will give kids a chance to touch and feel a university,” he said. “It creates a different mindset.”
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Information from: Houston Chronicle, https://www.houstonchronicle.com
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