Out of the Flat Iron, Into the Streets
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With Wicker Park increasingly attracting high-powered real estate developers, as well as the high rents and bottom-line-oriented attitude they bring with them, Horberg predicts that artists and arts organizations in the community will have a hard time dealing with unfamiliar, hard-nosed business realities. “What are people going to do to protect the small arts organizations in the community?” she asks, adding, “It’s getting harder and harder for small, intellectually focused arts enterprises to find a place to operate.”
According to Berger, the additional fees that began showing up on HotHouse rent statements last year were pass-through charges Horberg’s lease required her to pay. “Every lease is different,” says Berger, who adds that Horberg and her attorney knew what the charges were for but simply balked at paying them. A monthly pass-through charge is a percentage of the building’s operating expenses based on how much square footage a tenant occupies. Though Berger says such charges are assessed in many office buildings, the Flat Iron’s previous owners had apparently never collected the fee from Horberg.
For the third year in a row the League of Chicago Theatres has wound up its fiscal year in the black. Although all the numbers aren’t yet tallied, executive director Tony Sertich estimates the league finished the 1994-’95 fiscal year with a surplus between $15,000 and $20,000. Its operating budget is $500,000.
Erratum
