Camera 12 Cinemas

Dejael on March 2, 2003 at 7:46 pm

This fine example of steel and glass ultramodern hi-tech design is also known as the United Artists Theater complex, at Paseo de San Antonio in downtown San Jose at the VTA Light Rail stop by Starbuck’s coffee. Successful it was as architecture, but not as a commercial space, for some unknown reason (which many natives of San Jose believe was bad management) and now it sits empty and neglected, a sign of all that’s wrong with the City of San Jose’s downtown redevelopment plans. A similar theater in Burbank, for instance, does a thriving business. We hope it will be reoccupied as a multiplex theater by a major chain instead of being remodeled into something else, like a store.

scottfavareille on March 17, 2004 at 2:40 pm

I find that last comment interesting, considering that Camera’s original intensions was to move into the Pavilion, but that deal had fallen through at that time(2002). Camera was then focusing on expanding the Camera 3 space into the Kinko’s next door to it(and adding two additional screens). The Camera One was to shut down in either event.

Camera has done a very good job with turning a long shuttered UA theater (the Pruneyard 3 in Campbell) into the Camera 7. I would love to see this suceed.

DKelley on May 30, 2004 at 2:14 am

This is a truly stupid idea! Camera Cinemas is adding 12 screens to an already completely super-saturated marketplace. This theatre will face over 150 screens in direct competition within a 10 miles radius. Additionally, Camera lacks the finances to make this a truly state of the art theatre. Case in point is their Dolby Digital sound system plan—most “state of the art” cinemas these days spend the extra money for THX certification to tout that comment. I’m sure this Cinema will be very modern in comparison to its dumpy dirty Camera 3 just across the street, but a brand new Daewoo Hatchback still isn’t a Mercedes. This Daewoo will charge Mercedes prices, but not provide the amenties of AMC or Century, or the friendly feel of CineLux. Boo!

lostmemory on February 15, 2007 at 9:14 am

This is a 01/19/2000 article about the closing of the Pavilion Theater.

“Downtown San Jose, Calif., Theater Goes Dark.

Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Author: Bartindale, Becky

Jan. 18—Four years ago, the city invested millions in redevelopment money to open the UA Pavilion cineplex, ballyhooed as a key to revitalizing downtown San Jose.

On Saturday, United Artists Theatre Circuit closed the money-losing theater after it was unable to negotiate an agreement to sublet the eight-screen theater for office and retail use.

“We tried our best to make it work out, but we couldn’t wait,” said Tim Tarpley, UA’s senior vice president for real estate and development. Including its investment in the building, United Artists has lost $10 million on the UA Pavilion and would have continued to lose about $1 million a year, he said. “This theater is No. 1 on our list of money losers.”

Closing the 3,700-seat complex was the only option left, Tarpley said, after UA’s landlord, Forest City Enterprises, rejected its proposal to sublease part of the building to Bally Total Fitness and convert the rest to office space and retail use.

Representatives of Forest City did not return calls Monday. The Cleveland-based company bought the theater and the adjacent Pavilion, a failed retail center now being converted to office space, for $73 million in 1998. Both the theater and the retail complex were built with large public subsidies from the city’s redevelopment agency.

Under the terms of its agreement with the city, Forest City is required to keep theaters operating at the UA Pavilion or face penalties. UA’s lease with Forest City runs through 2008.

It’s too early to say what the city will do about the theater’s demise, said Joe Guerra, budget and policy director for Mayor Ron Gonzales. “I think we need to have a conversation at this point to see what Forest City intends to do,” he said.

“Fundamentally it’s Forest City’s problem — they’re the landlord,” Guerra said. “But it’s our problem, too, because we put money into the building to have a theater there and now there’s no theater.”

The city’s redevelopment agency put $4.6 million into the $11 million theater project.

The theater’s abrupt closing Saturday night — leaving some patrons holding tickets purchased earlier in the day — created a scene of confusion. A crowd gathered as police cars stood by with their lights flashing and movers loaded chairs, projectors, popcorn and candy onto two large trailers parked on Second Street.

Some patrons said they were told the theater was having technical problems with projectors and would reopen Sunday; others were told a different story.

San Jose resident Kathy Vanooteghem and her husband arrived at the theater for a 9:40 p.m. showing of “Snow Falling on Cedars,” only to find out they could not get in.

The young man behind the ticket window told her the theater was being remodeled, Vanooteghem said.

“It’s incredible they don’t have the decency to tell people the truth,” she fumed Monday, still irritated after paying a babysitter and missing the movie. “And here were these huge trucks they were loading up!”

Tarpley said he couldn’t comment on how the move was carried out because it was handled by another unit of the company.

The UA Pavilion had been scheduled to close Sept. 30, but the company agreed to keep the screens open while it looked for a new tenant or tenants to take over its lease.

In September, Tarpley identified one possible replacement as the Camera Cinemas, which opened its first screen downtown 25 years ago. The chain, which specializes in art, foreign and independent films, includes the Towne Theatre, Los Gatos Cinema and the Cameras 1 and 3 downtown, and has been seeking to expand downtown for the past few years.

For several weeks, the Cameras were negotiating with UA to take over the Pavilion complex and renovate it, said Jim Zuur, one of the chain’s three owners.

But suddenly, in November, Zuur said, UA representatives stopped returning his phone calls.

In the end, Tarpley said, the UA concluded that it could not attract a theater operator who could succeed at that location, including the Cameras.

“We felt they could not do a strong enough business to protect our lease and their sublease,” he said. “We didn’t want to be back having the same discussion in 18 or 24 months.”

Instead, UA turned its attention to other uses for the theater. It brought Forest City a letter of intent from Bally Total Fitness to lease about 35 percent of the space, Tarpley said. It also proposed renovations to expand the theater from about 70,000 to 82,000 square feet. With the high demand for office space, Tarpley said, Forest City would be able to nearly double its current rent, which UA had not paid for several months.

But Forest City, which also had been talking to Bally about locating in another Pavilion space, undercut UA’s financial proposal to Bally, Tarpley said.

Zuur said he’s still interested in the UA site and says the Cameras would succeed there. But putting together a deal probably would require a loan from the city, he said.

In the short term, the UA theater’s closing will help the Cameras, Zuur said. But in the long run, he said, “we need to expand and upgrade. We’re having a difficult time competing with all the screens around us. It’s essential for the Camera to do something in the next two or three years to establish ourselves as a competitive cinema downtown.”

Guerra, of the mayor’s office, said the city was not told the UA Pavilion was closing Saturday, but he said he wasn’t surprised by the company’s business decision".

Nobody on April 9, 2011 at 10:58 pm

[quote]
This theater is again in severe financial straits, but the City of San Jose is trying to extend it a lifeline: View link
[/quote]

I’m posting a little over a month after the above post. Does anyone happen to know whether the city was able to extend the lifeline mentioned?

Speaking as a taxpayer, I’m conflicted; I like the Camera Cinemas guys. OTOH, the City of San Jose’s Redevelopment Agency (RDA) contributed $4.6 million to the $11 million theater project when the UA tried to make a go of it. Then, when the Camera Cinemas took over, the RDA loaned -them- another $3.2 million, making a total of $7.8 million in taxpayer funds poured into a theater that, according to DKelley’s post above, “face[s] over 150 screens in direct competition within a 10 miles radius.”

I have to ask: am I missing something here? Or is the idea of pouring more taxpayer funds into a theater that’s been a money-losing proposition for more than a decade under two different owners as bad as it appears?

I also couldn’t help but notice that the Mercury News article made no mention of any RDA plans to perform a cost/benefit analysis so that the city has at least a vague idea of how much cash Camera 12 brings into the surrounding businesses. In other words: the RDA is simply -guessing- that Camera 12 serves as an “anchor” for the businesses in the area, but are either unable or unwilling to express the impact that Camera 12 has in terms of a dollar amount.

I know this is going to sound unkind, but: if the RDA is unable to quantify the financial impact that a business has, then how do they have any way of knowing what they are talking about? Ask yourself: wouldn’t a bank want to know this kind of information before extending -another- loan to someone who can’t pay back their original loan or make their rent?

This from a city that is running “a second consecutive budget deficit of more than $100 million.” Maybe it’s just me, but that sure doesn’t sound like a city that can afford to keep making poor financial decisions. ¬_¬