In a cryptic Wednesday night Instagram post a flickering marquee reads “Showcase Theatre”. The caption promises, “Your next concert could be a little closer to home.”
The city of Corona announced plans Wednesday, Oct. 7, for “Showcase 2.0,” a 600-plus-capacity music venue at 152 E. Sixth Street. It borrows the name of the Showcase Theatre, the punk and alternative rock club that operated at 683 S. Main Street from 1993 to 2008 . The family of the club’s owner, Ezzat Soliman, says no one from the city told them. They learned about it from Instagram.
“So, we’re bringing back the Showcase,” Joel Belding, the city’s planning and development director, told the City Council that night.
Ezzat Soliman died June 14, 2025. He was 69. His daughter, Sharein Soliman, said the family was not consulted about the use of the Showcase name and logo, and that she learned of the plan when she saw the city’s post.
What the city announced
The city and its economic development office posted the video jointly from the City of Corona and Corona Office of Economic Development at 6:58 p.m. Wednesday, about an hour after that night’s council meeting was scheduled to begin. According to the post, construction is “anticipated” in 2027, and the venue is “expected” to open in 2028.
The video is set to Aerosmith’s “Back in the Saddle”.
Later in the meeting, about an hour and seven minutes into the city’s video of the meeting, a “Showcase 2.0” slide laid out the plan: a “600 Capacity Concert Venue” at 152 E. Sixth Street, with the city to “hire a designer and complete renovation work.” The slide says the city has an LOI, or letter of intent, with a “Nationally known venue operator to operate the facility.” It does not name the operator.
“Our broker, through some personal connections, has identified a nationally known music venue operator,” Belding told the council. The city would “be back in front of the city council with some contracts next meeting, to be able to start that design work and to bring that operator officially on board,” Belding said. Belding called the venue “a regional draw.”
Showcase Adjacent
Showcase 2.0 would not reopen the original room. The building at 152 E. Sixth Street once housed a police substation installed during the years of the original Showcase, “a presence that many of us remember as anything but welcoming,” Logan Patrick wrote in an Instagram post on the account for his documentary about the club. His film draws on hundreds of hours of interviews with the club’s staff, owners and bands.
“The people who built and ran the original Showcase were not consulted, and the announcement made no acknowledgment of the history or community behind the name,” Patrick wrote. The city “was instrumental in bringing an end to the original Showcase,” he wrote, “yet this announcement offers no acknowledgment of that history, no recognition of the people who made the venue what it was.”
The post is approaching 5,000 “likes”.
“My dad would never stand for the city of Corona being involved in the reopening of Showcase after everything they did to shut it down.”
“My dad’s legacy was so important to him but the legacy of the community and the kids and bands that made Showcase what it was is just as important. My dad would never stand for the city of Corona being involved in the reopening of Showcase after everything they did to shut it down. Whoever is behind this has no idea what the Showcase meant to all of us. The name should never be used by whoever they are. It’s not about them not consulting us — which they absolutely should have. It’s about them hiding who they are and using the name when they don’t have any connection to what it was. I mean Aerosmith…Jesus Christ.”
Sharein Soliman, In a statement to Sixty Miles East
Corona has to earn the Showcase name
The Showcase was never just a building. “Ezzat, Paula, Joe, and so many others created a space where young people could find their footing, express themselves, discover music and art, and belong to something bigger than themselves,” Logan Patrick wrote in an Instagram post responding to the announcement. Many of those people are still here.
That is why the way Corona announced Showcase 2.0 stings. A family that lost Ezzat Soliman last year learned from an Instagram video that the city plans to reuse the name and logo he built. By the family’s account, nobody from the city called first.
The city’s own presentation adds to the problem. Its operator was found “through some personal connections,” and the public still doesn’t know who it is. Sharein Soliman put it plainly: the issue is “them hiding who they are and using the name when they don’t have any connection to what it was.”
But the anger comes with an opening for the city. Patrick isn’t rejecting the idea. “I have serious reservations about how this has begun, but I believe there’s still an opportunity to do something good here,” he wrote in the same post. His argument, echoed in many of the responses, is that Showcase 2.0 won’t be credible unless it’s done right, and doing it right means involving the family.
There is a cautionary tale for what happens when a name outlives the people behind it. After CBGB closed on the Bowery in 2006, designer John Varvatos opened a boutique in the space in 2008 and kept much of the punk club’s look. Critics called it a nostalgia play, a cred grab.
Corona can avoid that. A new venue downtown could be good news for local music. But borrowing a name means answering to the people it belongs to: talking with the Soliman family, saying who will run the place, crediting what the original built, and bringing the people who ran and played the Showcase into the planning. The questions Patrick posed on Instagram are the right place to start: “Will it be all ages? Will it prioritize community over profit?”
If Corona wants to revive the community the Showcase built, it should be glad to know many of the principals are still here and the community is largely intact. This can’t be done for them. It has to be done with them.
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Sixty Miles East contacted Joel Belding, Corona’s planning and development director, by phone and email on [day], and called the city’s Office of Economic Development and the office of Councilmember Tom Richins, who represents the downtown district. None had responded by publication. We look forward to hearing from the city and will update this story with its response.
Logan Patrick’s Showcase Theatre Documentary will be showing at the UCR Barn 10/15
