Jacksonville Center for the Arts (JCA)<\/a> says in a news release it is suspending its fundraising campaign, and will not exercise an option to purchase the Illinois Theatre.<\/p>\n\u201cAlthough this decision is disappointing, it reflects our commitment to fiscal responsibility and stewardship,\u201d said Larry Kuster, JCA board president, in a news release. \u201cWe are deeply grateful to the donors, partners, and organizations who supported this effort and believed in the vision for the Illinois
Theater.\u201d<\/p>\n
The center had hoped to raise nearly $9 million to rehab the theatre.\u00a0 But, despite a $1 million donation pledge from a philanthropist, the fundraising has so far come up short, despite what was said to be an initial groundswell of support.<\/p>\n
The Illinois Theatre opened in 1892 as the Grand Opera House, was demolished, and rebuilt in 1939.<\/p>\n
\u201cJCA will continue to evaluate ways to support arts, cultural events, and community programming
in Jacksonville, and appreciates the encouragement from stakeholders throughout this process,\u201d said a news release.<\/p>\n
A response from the theatre\u2019s owner is below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The center has not met an $8.9 million fundraising goal. Jacksonville, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) \u2013 An effort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-162517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}