The Shubert Organization, Broadway’s biggest and most powerful landlord, is expanding its Times Square empire.
The company recently made a bid for New World Stages, the complex of underground off-Broadway theaters on West 50th Street. Now comes word the Shuberts plan to build a state-of-the-art, 1,500-seat Broadway theater between West 45th and 46th streets — sandwiched between Frankie & Johnnie’s steakhouse and the Shuberts’ Imperial Theatre.
The proposed site is now partly filled with tents selling trinkets to tourists. The Shuberts can build there because they own the lot. The company declined to discuss its plans in detail, saying only that it is “in negotiations.”
Sources put the cost at $150 million. As far as I can tell, this will be the first new Broadway theater built from scratch since the Marquis Theatre went up in 1986.
Even though Livent, the company founded by disgraced impresario Garth Drabinsky, created the Lyric (formerly called the Foxwoods) in 1998, the building incorporated landmarked elements from the original Lyric (1903) and Apollo theaters (1920) that stood on that 42nd Street site, and was not built from the ground up. Similarly, the Roundabout Theatre Company’s American Airlines Theater (2000) was originally the Selwyn (1918), and its Stephen Sondheim Theatre (2010) is the refurbished Henry Miller’s (1918).
If the boom times continue, Times Square can certainly use another house. Shows like “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Wicked,” “The Lion King,” “Chicago” and “The Book of Mormon” seem destined to run for years, taking off the market the Majestic, the Gershwin, the Minskoff, the Ambassador and the Eugene O’Neill.
The Shuberts haven’t built a theater since 2002: off-Broadway’s Little Shubert, which has struggled to find tenants ever since. But in the early 20th century, founders Lee and J.J. Shubert were prolific builders. The geography of Broadway today is very much the result of their building spree, which included all the theaters along West 44th and 45th streets, plus the Winter Garden and the Broadway several blocks north.
Now let’s play a fun game: What should the Shuberts call their new theater? I thought maybe the Bob Wankel Center for the Performing Arts, after the company’s current president, but that might be a little too cheeky.
There should probably be a Tennessee Williams Theater or a Cole Porter or an Oscar Hammerstein II. What about the Ethel Merman? The Marian Seldes?
A Clive Barnes Theater would be nice. Nor would I object to a Michael Riedel Theater — after all, Mark Hellinger, whose theater is now the Times Square Church, was one of the first Broadway columnists.
E-mail me your suggestions, and I’ll pass them along to the powers that be at the Shuberts.