CULTURE |
A NEW SUNSET REBIRTH OF A PERFORMING ARTS MECCA IN WEST PALM BEACH
D
uring the classic “Chitlin’ Circuit” era of the 1930’s and 40’s, West Palm Beach’s Sunset Lounge, built in 1923, was one of the largest ballroom stops in the southeast for touring African American entertainers. It even housed its own famed house band, the Royal Sunset Orchestra. Showcasing classic Big Band acts like Count Basie and Duke Ellington all the way into the funky 1960’s with James Brown and Tina Turner, the Sunset was the place to “see and be seen.” Today, the Sunset is being revived as the cornerstone of the West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency’s (CRA) economic redevelopment efforts in the Historic Northwest section of the city. Currently closed for a multi-million dollar renovation and update, the Sunset will reopen in the late Spring of 2020 with a definitive lineup of musical performances as well as a new signature lounge and, for the first time, a fabulous full service restaurant. A series of festivals and pre-opening celebrations in the Historic Northwest will keep the redevelopment of the Sunset topmost in the minds of local residents. In 2016, as the CRA began planning the rehabilitation of the Sunset, they were excited to learn that the project was a finalist in the Knight Foundation’s national “Cities Challenge” grant competition. One of the secondphase questions asked of all finalists in the Challenge was a familiar one to anyone involved in historic restoration work: “What are the threats to the success of the project?” The classic concerns for preservationists are things like “The city is building a six-lane highway through the project property” or “If the termites
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stop holding hands, the building will fall down.” Not in this instance, though. No impending roadwork threatened the site and, built entirely of concrete, the Sunset is a bunker of a building, the kind of place you want to be in a hurricane. It even survived a raging fire in the 1930’s that destroyed every other building on the block. A 1942 trade ad trumpeted the Sunset as “the largest fireproof dance hall in the Southeast!” In the case of the Sunset, a much-loved community asset in a greatly ignored and down-at-the-heels neighborhood that was understandably suspicious of infrequent government initiatives, the threat to the project was more insidious than the usual physical challenges. The threat was “What if the CRA spends literally millions of the public’s tax dollars on this project and the community it was meant to enhance simply rejects it?” The successful project would be one that was built with the community, not merely for the community. It would have to be transitional, not merely transactional. The CRA went on to win the Knight Foundation’s “Cities Challenge” and the grant award funded the start of a two-year process that allowed the Agency to intentionally focus on how local government could be doing a much more effective job of civic engagement, of creating real points of connection with the community. It enabled the CRA to take the luxury of time to slow down an aggressive design and construction schedule to meet and interact with neighborhood champions through a series of events and listen to their opinions on what became the evolving plan. More importantly, it made the Agency view its work through the lens of racial equity.