Culture
Jav Ducker / Little Village
A-LIST Cedar Rapids: The Olympic
The Once and Future Olympic How a Cedar Rapids businessman rebirthed a vision. BY GENEVIEVE TRAINOR
O
nce upon a time in Cedar Rapids, there was an Olympic Theatre. Located at 1124 3rd St, the records of the History Center show that it was built as a private home, but became the Olympic in 1912, remaining under that name until 1939. “The building showed silent flicks early on and then often showed Czech films during the 1930s,” the History Center shared in an email. Over the decades, it became the Strand Theatre, then the Community Theatre, then the Community Theatre of Cedar Rapids Inc. In 1990, it evolved into the See Dar Rabbits Jazz & Blues Society. But in 1993, the dilapidated building was torn down. Fast-forward another 25 years, and enter 54 August 2021 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV297
Steve Shriver. The Cedar Rapids businessman (Ecolips, SOKO Outfitters) had recently moved Brewhemia, the coffee shop he runs with his wife Andrea, into the lower level of 1202 3rd St. The building had recently been home to the Chrome Horse Saloon and its upstairs neighbor, Third Street Live. But in 2014, an early morning fire damaged the building significantly. It was a four-alarmer, something that fire department Public Information Officer Greg Buelow told the Gazette at the time was “a very rare event.” The staircase to the second level performance space was destroyed completely, along with other significant damage. The Chrome Horse found a new home across the street at 1201 3rd St, but no comparable music venue replaced Third Street in the Cedar Rapids musical landscape. And Shriver, a passionate advocate for the New Bohemia neighborhood and self-described “serial entrepreneur,” found it difficult to see the building remain unused. “It was painful to see such a historic place sit empty for so long after the fire,” he said in an email. So a few years after Brewhemia and then the restaurant Caucho had moved in downstairs at 1202 to repurpose the former Chrome Horse space, Shriver decided to take on the former Third Street Live as well. “Each of my businesses fit a community or
Bobby Rush. photo by Bill Steber
Bobby Rush w/ Kevin Burt and Big Medicine, Olympic South Side Theater, Cedar Rapids, Friday, Aug. 27, 7 p.m., $30-75
industry need, and I saw an opportunity to rehabilitate this amazing space and have it serve the community.” Shriver hearkens back to 1202’s own history in his utilization of the space: Along with a few more mundane tenants, prior to Third Street it had been Shades Night Club in the 1990s and, in the first half of the 20th century, had for around 50 years been community social hub ZCBJ Hall (Západní Česko Bratrská Jednota; in English, Western Bohemian Fraternal Association), the History Center said. ZCBJ was an offshoot of the Czech-Slovak Protective Society, according to the venue’s website—that CSPS building being just down the road at 1103 3rd St.
