XCHORUSX at Showcase 1.0
Photo by: Zach Cordner
The city's planning director says Corona doesn't want to co-opt the Showcase's history and asked to be connected with the Soliman family.
The "nationally known" operator Corona officials would not name on Oct. 7 is Knitting Factory Entertainment Inc., according to an agenda the city released Thursday. The City Council will consider a $900,000 agreement with the company to run the venue at 152 E. Sixth St. at its Oct. 21 meeting.
The city says the venue will open under a different name.
The city announced the project as "Showcase 2.0," borrowing the name of the Showcase Theatre, the club Ezzat Soliman ran at 683 S. Main St. from 1993 to 2008. His family learned of the plan from the city's Instagram post, Sixty Miles East reported last week.
Joel Belding, Corona's planning and development director, attended the Thursday screening of Logan Patrick's documentary at the UCR Barn. He had reached out beforehand to ask whether I would be there. We spoke for about 20 minutes, mostly about the new operator.
"The city does not want to co-opt the Showcase's history," Joel Belding
Belding asked me to connect him with the Soliman family and said the family should be recognized as part of the new project.
The proposed agreement runs five years with one five-year renewal option. It would let the city manager approve amendments of up to $90,000, or 10% of the contract. The item also asks the council to move $100,000 from the Corona Mall Properties Fund to the Office of Economic Development's operating budget.
Knitting Factory Entertainment is a Los Angeles-based company that handles music production, promotion, and venue management. It grew out of a single New York venue founded in 1987.
The city has not said whether the venue will be all ages, one of the questions Patrick raised when the project was announced.
On Oct. 7, Belding told the council, "So, we're bringing back the Showcase." If the city meant a spiritual rather than a literal connection to the old room , that nuance was lost. The fault lies in how the city communicated, not in how the public understood it. The city's post was in poor taste, and the dispute that followed could have been avoided. Belding's request is a start.
As any live music project advances at Sixth and Main, any reference to the site's music history must include Ezzat Soliman and his family. They should be consulted and honored concretely. No one is trying to refight past battles, but the community overwhelmingly believes the city treated the family poorly. If the city wants to remedy that and bring the community that grew up around the Showcase into a future venue, that venue should carry a permanent, tangible reminder of what the Soliman family contributed.
