FACE LIFT Workers are racing to finish the facade and interior in time.

Photograph: Bryant Manning

While we walk through the last-minute construction of the new Morse Theatre in Rogers Park, Andy McGhee seems gripped by both excitement and anxiety as he instructs men in hard hats. The newly renovated venue’s manager, McGhee, who describes himself as a “committed Irish drinker” and boasts skills in jazz harmonica, piano and guitar, has combined his lifelong interests in “saloons and music.” With its splashes of deep crimson, green and navy blue, the main seating area looks more like a Casablanca-type cocktail lounge than a traditional music space; the front restaurant and bar, the Century Public House, has been reconstructed from a ’20s-era bar and a church altar.

Just off the Red Line Morse stop, the 300-seat, 3,000-square-foot versatile performance space features classical music every Sunday at 11am. After WFMT station manager Steve Robinson realized the potential of the lavishly retro space, the venue signed on to broadcast the concerts on the station’s new Live from the Morse program. On Sunday 19, Irina Kotlyar and Gregory Shifrin inaugurate the show with four-hand piano music.

While McGhee didn’t undertake this difficult project, five years in the making, as just a classical-music spot—jazz, blues and world music are its intended bread and butter—he waxes nostalgic for a time when classical chamber-music concerts had a certain down-home appeal. “For a buck and a half at Orchestra Hall, I used to go see Mstislav Rostropovich do the Cello Suites, and then he’d stop halfway through to tell a story about Bach. That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” says the Rogers Park native, who gives his age as “the better part of 60.” The Morse’s classical series will attempt to bring back that brand of informality; charging $10 per event is a good way to start.

Still, McGhee says ticket sales have been slow, though he understands progress takes time. The building’s anonymous investment group, which has spent “many millions of dollars” on the venue, doesn’t expect to see a profit in five years at the least, but realistically more like 25 years. According to McGhee, a project like this is possible only if financiers have the patience to recognize its cultural value and positive impact on the neighborhood.

In August, McGhee says vandals set the project back “a lot of money” and a full month of progress with an arson and break-in that badly damaged the walls and electrical wiring; YOU WANT WAR. COME GET UZ and other graffiti was scrawled on the second floor. Recovery happened quickly, but the planned August opening was pushed back to last week.

In 1912, the building opened as a vaudeville house and nickelodeon; in the ’30s, it became a movie theater—called the Co-Ed after its Loyola University audience base. From the mid-’50s through the ’70s, a synagogue took over: McGhee recalls seeing an old photo of a rabbi posing near a Co-Ed popcorn stand. But from the 1980s onward, the building stood empty. One businessman even tried to convert the classy structure into a “knock-off Rolex minimall.”

Today, the renovated theater’s ecofriendly specs move the space into the 21st century. With a green roofing system, extensive solar paneling and renewable building materials, the Morse Theatre has been certified by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). On our tour, McGhee points to the nearby Red Line stop as the venue’s greenest element.

Perhaps most promising for the Morse is McGhee’s willingness to let it evolve. He’ll bring in a 16_-foot hi-def movie screen for film festivals and entertains the possibility of live theater. A 1964 Hammond B3 organ is on its way, too. (A nifty elevating hydraulic stage, which transports the house’s Steinway grand piano and other heavy objects, makes it easy for the space to switch functions.) And if the Cubs ever make it to the World Series, McGhee says, “I don’t have any problem turning our concert hall into a 200-seat bar for a day. I’m not ruling out the idea of anything.”