Organizers for the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum on Route 66 announced they have acquired a building in downtown Joliet, with the hopes of opening it by next year.
According to the Joliet Patch, the museum’s organizers bought a three-story building at 9 W. Cass St. (seen above) that dates to the 1920s. The structure sits between the northbound and southbound lanes of Illinois 53, aka Route 66.
It’s down the block from the Joliet Area Historical Museum and next to Juliet’s Italian Restaurant. It also is across the street from The Forge, a popular nightclub.
Organizers announced plans for the Illinois rock museum in 2017. The Patch reported:
[C]hairman Ron Romero is now ready to move forward with announcing his site after three years of continuous fund-raising activity.
He said the major building renovations would begin at 9 W. Cass Street in the coming weeks. It’s his goal to have the new museum ready to welcome tourists for the summer of 2020. He said he intends to use as many Joliet-area laborers as he can. […]
Most of the museum will occupy the second and third floors, Romero said. Part of the first-floor will likely continue to be used by the Will County Model Railroad Association. “We’d like to keep them there,” Romero told Joliet Patch on Friday.
There will be space to hold small concerts and wedding receptions, plus plenty of rooms to showcase exhibits and have a gift shop. […]
He said the Illinois Rock & Roll museum now has a 15-member board of directors and will have a $5.7 million budget.
“That will cover the renovations, buying displays and exhibits and a three-year operating budget,” he explained.
Illinois-linked rock acts the museum has touted include Chicago, REO Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, Buddy Guy, Smashing Pumpkins, Kanye West, King’s X, the Blues Brothers and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave.
The Patch article also mentions Beatles guitarist George Harrison, who had a sister in Benton, Illinois, he visited during the mid-1960s.
The museum originally was named Route 66 The Road to Rock museum.
The only comparable museum that comes to mind is the upcoming OKPop Museum in Tulsa, which will pay tribute to Oklahoma-based music artists.
(Excerpted image of the building at 9 W. Cass St. in Joliet, Illinois, via Google Street View)