{"id":2418622,"date":"2026-05-15T19:57:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T19:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2418622"},"modified":"2026-05-15T19:57:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T19:57:15","slug":"new-entertainment-venue-proposed-on-howard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/new-entertainment-venue-proposed-on-howard\/","title":{"rendered":"New entertainment venue proposed on Howard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"post-228829\">\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>A planned entertainment venue tailored to adults is looking to be a new hub for coffee and comedy on Howard Street.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Culture Connects 707, at 707 Howard St., hopes to convert the space into a dual-purpose \u201ccomedy cafe\u201d \u2014 serving as a cafe during the daytime and a comedy club in the evening.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>James Simelton, owner of the venue, said he was aiming for a \u201cStarbucks vibe\u201d for the cafe. Meanwhile the comedy club would host stand-up comedy performances, open mic nights and improv performances.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI figured that having a comedy club there \u2026 would be a great thing for the community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The proposed hours would be 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily for the cafe, and 6 to 11 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays for the comedy club.<\/p>\n<p>Simelton said he was looking to open the establishment soon, pending approval of its special use permit, as well as food and liquor licenses.<\/p>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .entry-content --><\/p>\n<p>\t<!-- .entry-footer --><\/p>\n<div class=\"author-bio\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/evanstonnow.com\/author\/adrian-martinez\/\" rel=\"author\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"author-bio-text\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<!-- .author-bio-header --><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAdrian joined Evanston Now in 2025. He previously covered education for The Times of Northwest Indiana. He grew up in the Chicago area and graduated from North Central College, where he worked for the&#8230;\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"author-link\" href=\"https:\/\/evanstonnow.com\/author\/adrian-martinez\/\" rel=\"author\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Adrian Martinez-De La Cruz\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .author-bio-text --><\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .author-bio --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source evanstonnow.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A planned entertainment venue tailored to adults is looking to be a new hub for coffee and comedy on Howard Street. Culture Connects 707, at 707 Howard St., hopes to convert the space into a dual-purpose \u201ccomedy cafe\u201d \u2014 serving as a cafe during the daytime and a comedy club in the evening. James Simelton, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2418623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2418622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/New-entertainment-venue-proposed-on-Howard.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2418622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2418624,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2418622\/revisions\/2418624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2418623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2418622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2418622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2418622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}