EVANSTON, Ill. — Northlight Theatre, long of Skokie, has had a date with Evanston from its beginning.

It’s a relationship officially re-consummated Tuesday as Northlight cuts the ribbon on its new, $33 million theater, built from the ground up in downtown Evanston, the near-Chicago suburb with a university whose graduates have shaped much of Chicago’s theater history.

Aptly enough, Evanston Theatre Company was the name first picked in 1974 by the theater company’s founders — Gregory Kandel, Mike Nussbaum and Frank Galati, all now deceased. The first production, Galati’s staging of Tom Stoppard’s “Jumpers,” took place in the auditorium of Kingsley Elementary School in Evanston, Kandel having just finished graduate school at Northwestern University.

The company name changed over time, to North Light Repertory in 1978, finally Northlight Theatre in 1984. So did the locations after Northlight was forced to leave Kingsley. Evanston’s old Coronet Theatre at 817 Chicago Ave. (an art deco movie house that was demolished for condos in 2008) was Northlight’s home for a time in the early ’90s.

There also was a fraught 1994 flirtation with Wilmette — Northlight brokered a deal with National Louis University in the neighboring suburb to perform in the school’s new performance center. But neighbors objected to what they claimed would be increased traffic and demands on parking; National Louis got cold feet and reneged on the deal. Northlight eventually was awarded $325,000 in damages for the breach of contract, and the neighbors now have to contend with a new football stadium on a rather different scale.

Skokie eventually came to the theater’s rescue, in the shape of its new North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, which is where Northlight moved in 1997 and stayed for the next 29 years in a serviceable space it did not fully control, that doubled as a banquet hall.

Now, finally, it is back in charge of its own destiny at 1012 Church St., in Evanston.

“This is where our audience base has been the most loyal,” said current artistic director BJ Jones, 75 (whose own history with Northlight as a venerable actor goes back to the days of the Evanston Theatre Company). “We will be back in control of our own box office and our own schedule. We will be able to program not just the way we want but when we want.”

Construction of the theater began in earnest in March of last year. It was designed by the architectural firm of Eckenhoff Saunders with the help of the theater planning consultancy Schuler Shook. The project cost about $33 million, a relatively modest sum when compared to other recent new theaters. (As comparatives, TimeLine Theatre’s new home in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, built inside an existing historic building, cost $44 million, and Milwaukee Repertory Theater spent some $80 million on its recent renovation.)

There is just one thrust-style stage in the new theater, with about 285 seats. Initial plans for a second studio space were scuppered earlier in the project as a cost-saving measure as the price of materials exploded, although executive director Tim Evans said as he gave a recent tour that there is room on the lot Northlight purchased to create an additional performance space in the future, as well as artist housing. “That’s our hope,” he said.

The theater’s offices will remain off-site but there is a rehearsal space, comfortable audience seating and an elegant lobby with a grand chandelier and greatly improved technical equipment. The aesthetic is clean and contemporary, akin to an off-Broadway house. Crucially for Jones and Evans, there is also a frontage on a walkable street, which was far from the case in Skokie.

“Now people can just stroll through our door,” Jones said.

Evanston has had many prior flirtations with performing arts spaces, none of which previously have panned out, with the exception of a modest space for the Theo Ubique Theatre on Howard Street, well south of downtown.

One of those dalliances, in 2017, was a grand plan for Northlight to move into a new, 37-story high-rise in the historic 1700 block of Sherman Avenue. But the skyscraper attracted vociferous opposition, a further skirmish in Evanston’s long-running war between developers with high-rise aspirations and preservationists who want to preserve a college town of a more limited scale. Other ideas for the arts downtown over the years included a venue built inside the former Varsity Theatre, long the home of the retail store The Gap and soon to be a new restaurant, Alleyway Grill, created by the award-winning chefs Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark. That never came to fruition either.

For the record, Northlight is not the only Chicago theater to seek a downtown Evanston home. The now-defunct Touchstone Theatre made such a play in 1999, after taking up residence in the far-from-ideal McGaw YMCA Childcare Center Auditorium. It never came together.

Northlight actually signed an option to purchase what then was an existing building at 1012-1016 Church Street as far back as 2019. The idea to purchase and raze the site, Evans said, came from the restaurateur Amy Morton, whose steakhouse The Barn will now operate next to the theater. (Morton is now Northlight’s tenant, Evans said, noting its presence should be an asset for both.) Indeed, Evans had for years tried to sell Evanston on the need for an arts center to juice business for its retail and restaurant-heavy business district, which often struggles with foot traffic, especially when Northwestern is not in session. “We think we can help revitalize the business district,” he said, as he has been saying for years.

Artistically, Northlight, which reported annual expenditures of about $4.4 million on its 2025 tax return, long has been perceived as a more modest operation than flashier Chicago flagships like the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre and Chicago Shakespeare Theater, where the executive pay is far higher — as has been the attention from New York. On the other hand, it also has rarely been associated with the edginess associated with famed companies like Remains Theatre, Next Theatre and Wisdom Bridge Theatre. All now defunct.

While older audience members dominate most Chicago theaters, gray hair is especially prevalent at Northlight, where production budgets of late often have led to small-cast shows, with some notable seasonal exceptions. And, over the years, financial exigencies at Northlight have been numerous and, on more than one occasion, close to fatal.

But the body of work, especially the acting in an actor-led theater that has prized great performances, has been as impressive as the theater’s resilient longevity. Notable Northlight productions have included Stoppard stagings by the late Michael Maggio, a former artistic director, as well as unforgettable stagings of Steven Dietz’s AIDS allegory “Lonely Planet,” Noah Haidle’s “Birthday Candles” and numerous stellar takes on Irish, American and English 20th-century plays, not to mention, among other small musicals, the world premiere of Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last Five Years,” which recently was revived on Broadway.

A formidable array of artists have chosen to work at the theater. The late George Wendt, John Mahoney and Nussbaum all were regulars on its stage. Michael Shannon did a show, “Grace,” in 2006. And, over the last few years, the theater has showcased world premieres by such writers as John Patrick Shanley, Richard Dresser and Lauren Gunderson. Leading current Chicago performers like Bethany Thomas, Sean Fortunato and Kelvin Roston (to name but three) have appeared with some frequency. As a result, no Chicago theater has a more loyal audience, and the loquacious and genial Jones, who has been at his post for close to 30 years, has made a point of serving their tastes, even when pressured to do otherwise. They have rewarded him not just with their continuous attendance but with an impressive array of contributions to the current capital campaign. Evans says the theater has raised virtually all of its cost, meaning the theater will not be saddled with significant long-term debt.

The two men also have embarked on an extensive parking reassurance campaign, still ongoing. Skokie offered ample free parking on-site and Evanston is famously challenging for parkers.

“There is a lot right there,” Evans said, pointing his finger as he stood recently outside the new theater, emphasizing that asset for the umpteenth time. “And ample street parking.”

Plus, of course, both CTA and Metra lines now run within an easy walk from the theater, making the gig more attractive for actors and the shows more accessible to theater-loving Chicagoans who live to the south. Opening on Sept. 18, Northlight’s first show in its new theater will be a fresh version of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s “The Front Page,” a Chicago classic, as newly adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher. A bevy of Chicago actors from Kate Fry to Tim Kazurinsky, who happen to be longtime Evanstonians, will star.

Jones declined to say how long he plans to stay in his job now that his dream of a new Evanston home has been realized.

“I have to see how this first year plays out,” he said, after a pause. “Right now, I am planning the 2027-28 season.”

In Evanston, of course.

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