Monday, March 7, 2011

Lights Help! The Scout Shows Off a Subtle Improvement

Call it insignificant, call it beautiful or call it crazy...but in our opinion a subtle lighting addition to the old Opera restaurant at 1301 S. Wabash has us excited about what could be going on inside. If you're a reader of the Sloopin you probably know that Opera served it's last meal on December 31st of 2010 and that a new concept called the Scout is planning on moving in this spring (last we heard in May).

The windows are papered up and last we saw the entire place was gutted. But last week when strolling past the building at night we noticed the addition of new lights which do an excellent job of accentuating some of the buildings character. It seems like a simple yet impactful improvement to the building and with this type of attention to detail we're excited to see what they have in store for the inside.

It also appears that the vintage, translucent glass near the corner of the building might be coming down. A couple days after we took the picture above we noticed that plywood boards have been put over these tiles. We can only assume that means they're coming down. Maybe we're wrong.

Or maybe we're just crazy and shouldn't be looking so hard for signs of life at places like this.