Victoria Theater redevelopment getting financing

After years of delays, the long-abandoned Victoria Theater site is close to getting financing for construction and redevelopment.

The Victoria Theater, a Harlem icon on 125th Street between Frederick Douglass and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. boulevards, has been vacant since it closed in 1989. Its now slated for redevelopment by Danforth Development Partners, LLC and Exact Capital.

According to Harlem Community Development Corporation President Curtis Archer, the 26-story, 360,000-square-foot complex will feature a 210-room hotel with a ballroom, mixed-income rental housing, a cultural arts center with a 199-seat theater, retail space, a restaurant and jazz club, and an underground parking lot.

Weve made tremendous progress and are, right now, in the throes of locking up a bank for a construction loan, Exact Capital co-president Michael Callaghan said. Were looking to close on financing in the first quarter of 2013. Well have a 24-month build schedule, so the building should be complete by the first quarter of 2015.

Some of the theaters architectural features, including the front exterior, the lobby, and the staircase, will be preserved, while the original marquee and blade sign will be replicated. Danforth President Steve Williams said his company is collaborating with the State Historic Preservation Office on the project.

They have inspected the site and they have come to meetings. We talked with them, and we have gotten their tentative approval on the project, Williams said.

The Harlem CDC, which has owned the building since 1977, chose Danforth to redevelop the site in 2007. The newly developed space, which Archer said will cost $143 million, is also slated to include four arts organizations: the Harlem Arts Alliance, JazzMobile, the Classical Theater of Harlem, and the Apollo Theater Foundation, Inc.

A number of institutions who had been advocates for Harlem, celebrating the history and culture, were getting displaced by increasing rental rates, Williams said. I felt that people who had been advocating for Harlem should be rewarded and be a part of the largest development project in Harlem, maybe even in its history. So we put together a team of a broad spectrum of great groups.

Michael Unthank, a consultant for the Harlem Arts Alliance, said the organization is working to create a collaborative cultural space with other arts organizations.

Right now, the consortium of arts organizations is working with the architects to organize the space, Unthank said. Because of HAAs nature as a service organization, we will serve as the link to the grassroots Harlem art community.

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Victoria Theater redevelopment getting financing