At the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority on Wednesday work began on the redesign of the location's John Dillinger exhibit and gift shop to make way for an expanded gift shop and an eventual ‘grab and go’ cafe.
“We’re opening things up,” said Speros Batistatos, President, and CEO of the SSCVA. “We’re reconfiguring the whole space in there. Our goal is to come up with a product that is kind of a food and beverage product that will build off of all the locally grown and sourced foods. We’re going to pull a lot of stuff from what Fair Oaks is doing in their gift shop area where it’s grab and go sandwiches and things like that. It’s going to be similar to that sort of menu.”
The Dillinger-themed mural that welcomed visitors into the Dillinger Exhibit at the South Shore CVA was painted by Mitch Markovitz over three weeks in November 1999 in anticipation of the December 1st grand opening of the location.
“It’s hard to believe that it was sixteen and a half years ago,” Batistatos said. “The building still looks great and, I’ve got to tell you, I hate to cover up this piece of art. It’s just great and I’ve always loved it. If there was a way to save it we would.”
“In order to repurpose the building and move ahead with what we have planned we’ve got to cover it up,” said Batistatos. “We want to get the expanded gift shop up and running and then really build out and fully explore the brand to make sure and understand where we’re sourcing our products. We don’t want to compete with private sector food and beverage people so we’ll have a limited menu of locally Indiana-grown products. We want as close to 100% of the menus contents to come from Indiana farms and Indiana producers. Nobody else is doing that so we think it’s a great way to introduce travelers to a lot of the great stuff going on in Indiana.”
Batistatos and the SSCVA will be looking to incorporate the South Shore Legends into the newly expanded gift shop and cafe design.
“We’re going to work off of the South Shore Legends stuff,” said Batistatos. “We’re going to pull that stuff off the wall and incorporate that into the space and the menu.”
Markovitz, who was on hand to paint over the mural he created in 1999, has been working with the SSCVA for many years on the South Shore Poster Art Series.
“I was working with Speros before this building even started when they were still on Broadway in Merrillville. For now, the wall is just going to be white but most of the wall will eventually be coming down.”
The completion date of the project is pending.
