In late 2008, just as the mortgage market and the economy took a plunge and American consumers went into panic mode, the leaders of Actors’ Equity calmly saw an opportunity. Real estate had helped them build a nice nest egg. They had owned their building at 165 W. 46th St. in New York. When they sold it a few years ago, they kept the land.

“That has been a very profitable experience,” said Steve DiPaola, Equity’s national director of finance and administration.

So DiPaola said, “When we were experiencing the worst of the economic downturn two years ago, my board instructed me to look at what real estate opportunities might exist.”

He looked west, to Chicago, and found a number of good possibilities.

The one they decided on, at 557 W. Randolph, just opened a few weeks ago. By accounts both financial and aesthetic, it was a good investment.

The welcome desk and member meeting area. The architects used curvature to give the space a sense of movement and accomodate different ceiling heights.

The four story building is actually three buildings that have been put together, and dates back to the late 1850s, when it was a grocery store run by Henry Horner, grandfather to the 1930s Illinois governor of the same name. The most recent owner was committed to another building at the time of the economic downturn, and needed to sell the Randolph Street one. That gave Equity a nice opportunity. They bought the 21,000 square foot building for a mere $2.1 million. In cash.

“Both the state of the markets and the willingness of the seller at the time weighed in our favor,” said DiPaola.

The building does many things for the Equity Central Region, which has seen a lot of growth in both local contracts and point of origin national tours in the last decade. First, it gives Equity a footprint, with a building and a sign in a trendy neighborhood. Second, it gets the staff out of the office building at 203 N. Wabash, and allows members a homier atmosphere. It also provides a bigger audition studio, more meeting and conference rooms, a larger workspace for members and staff to meet, and a room dedicated solely to housing all of Actors’ Equity’s servers.

The audition studio at the new Equity building is spacious, soundproof and well lit.

The build-out for three of the four floors cost Equity $3 million, and was done with an eye toward sustainable construction. Much of the building is illuminated by skylights, and windows were built to provide light for office staff. Where possible, they cleaned the exposed brick rather than cover it with wallboard. All materials, according to DiPaola, were bought in the Midwest. And the design incorporates curvature wherever possible, which gives the building a sense of movement and compensates for the lower ceilings at the back—which was once a separate, shorter building.

The audition studio is on the ground floor, sharing space with the library and, eventually, Equity’s credit union. This means actors coming to audition will not have to traipse through the building, but can come right in, sit in the library and study their sides or go into one of two warm-up booths to vocalize. Once inside, actors can scream or sing as loud as they want. Architect Coyne and Associates used offset walls and acoustic panels, and hung the ceiling tiles on grids to minimize vibration. This means, said DiPaola, “Someone can stand in the audition center and pretty much scream at the top of their lungs and if you’re standing outside the door, at best you can hear a little muffled sound.”

The third floor of the building is currently unoccupied, but Equity is looking for renters. Those interested can call Central Region executive director Kathryn Lamkey at 312/641-0393.