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Theaters
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April 15, 2009
New options for Beach Theatre
CAPE MAY, NJ — With the Beach Theatre in danger, a group is now looking into turning it into a hotel.
A group trying to save the city’s last movie theater is exploring building a hotel on the site to save at least one of the four movie screens.
President Steve Jackson, of the Beach Theatre Foundation, said it may be possible to fit 50 to 75 hotel rooms on the property, and thus entice a developer willing to pay $12 million for the Beach Avenue property. Jackson said a hotel could be built on the property, which takes up a city block, while still retaining part of the movie theater.
Read the full story in the Press of Atlantic City.
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Senator Theatre auction cancelled
BALTIMORE, MD — New developments in the future of the Senator Theatre.
But the city’s plans to purchase that debt, unveiled April 12, kept it from auction. Mayor Sheila Dixon is slated to take the city’s recommendation to the Board of Estimates for approval within the next month.
“The auction was cancelled because the City has agreed to buy the note from First Mariner Bank,” said Baltimore City Deputy Mayor Andrew Frank in an e-mail response Tuesday. Frank said after the city purchases the debt, it will foreclose on the theater and schedule a new auction.
Read more at the Baltimore Business Journal.
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April 14, 2009
Looking back and forward at Patchogue
PATCHOGUE, NY — With an urban revival about to take place, locals look towards the Plaza Theater to tie together the new downtown.
Today the East Main Street movie theater invokes memories for people such as Tim Mazzei, a lifelong Blue Point resident and now a Brookhaven Town councilman. Mazzei, 54, remembers sneaking off to the Plaza as a young boy some 45 years ago to watch a certain Alfred Hitchcock movie – one about birds – that his parents had forbidden him to see because it would terrify him.
The Plaza showed its last movie more than 20 years ago and has since descended into disrepair. The empty marquee, crumbling facade and boarded entrance are eyesores, and town officials say it has become a haven for drug use, vagrants and vandalism.
And Mazzei is now helping lead the charge to get the Plaza torn down – finally.
Read the full story at Newsday.
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April 13, 2009
New theater has all the classics
WABASHA, MN — Thanks to some renovations, the new Broadway Theater is giving locals some cinema options.
Would you like to maybe see a good movie at a low price? In a theater that boasts surround sound, a HUGE screen, and that can play Blu-ray discs?
Well, have we got the answer for you!
How about next weekend trying out Wabasha’s new Broadway Theater!? Or, should we say, old Broadway Theater? Because the new Broadway Theater is really the old Wabasha High School Auditorium, located in what was Wabasha High School, then the middle school, and now is the Mittel Schule.
Read more in the Post Bulletin.
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April 10, 2009
San Angelo to sell 40 acres, get drive-in theater
SAN ANGELO, TX — The wheels are in motion for San Angelo to get a drive-in.
The city council Tuesday approved the sale of 40 acres in the city’s industrial park – at U.S. Highways 67 and 277, and Loop 306 in northeast San Angelo – to Lamesa Enterprises. The company wants to develop a three-screen drive-in theater there.
According to the agreement, the company will pay $8,000 an acre for the land. In turn, the city will build a 3,300-foot sewer line to the property and let the company drill a water well for the business.
Read the full story at Go San Angelo.
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April 9, 2009
Art-house theater weathers storms, recession
FORT LAUDERDALE, FL — Celebrating ten years in service, the Cinema Paridiso is still going strong
In the 10 years of its existence, Fort Lauderdale Is your Fort Lauderdale restaurant clean? – Click Here.’s Cinema Paradiso has seen plenty of noise and bustle. It’s hosted fundraisers, barbecues and classic car shows; motorcycle rallies, rock festivals and Halloween shindigs.
But Broward County Click here for restaurant inspection reports’s lone art-house cinema is quiet as a church on most weekday mornings —– appropriate for a place that used to be one. On one morning last week, the lights are dim and the air conditioning is scant. The theater is empty except for Hal Axler, the theater’s programming director and the executive director of the Broward County Film Society. Sitting alone in the spacious second-floor office, he fields all the phone calls and even helps to unpack Bud Light cases from a hand truck during a morning delivery.
Read the full story in the Sun Sentinel.
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April 8, 2009
Wind lights up Ill. drive-in
GIBSON CITY, IL — Want to save some money in today’s economy running your theater? How about operating your theater on wind like the Harvest Moon.?
When its season opened two weekends ago, the Harvest Moon blew in with the wind literally as the world’s first and only turbine-powered movie theater.
“Indoor or out,” said Onarga-based owner Mike Harroun, who has operated the twin-screen drive-in since 1989.
The only similar venue, he said, is the Color House Theatre, a live children’s stage in Merton Abby Mills, England.
Read more in the Chicago Tribune.
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New shipyard theater coming this summer
A once dilapidated shipyard is being transformed into commercial retail with a new theater from Patriot Cinemas.
Beautiful wasn’t the first word that came to mind when describing the shipyard site in the past.
While the waterfront bustled with as many as 26,000 workers building ships for the Navy at record-setting pace during World War II, activity on the 130-acre site on the Weymouth-Hingham line quickly declined when the war ended. For decades, all that was there were a few low-rent businesses, dilapidated warehouses, and parking for the commuter boat.
In 1996, a local company bought the site and unveiled plans for a massive residential, commercial, and retail development. Thirteen years later, the old buildings are gone, new ones have gone up, and work continues with a consortium of developers on a 1.2-million-square-foot plan.
Read more at the Boston Globe.
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April 6, 2009
Operator of Boardman’s Art might move
CHAMPAIGN, IL — The operations of the Boardman’s Art Theatre could be moving soon to another local venue due to rising costs.
In March, Boardman sent an e-mail to some area residents acknowledging rumors that he was looking into other locations for his movie theater. Attempts to reach Boardman, who lives in California, were unsuccessful.
Boardman’s lease at the Art Theatre expires at the end of this year, said David Kraft, who owns the building. Kraft said he would like to see the building continue to house a movie theater, but at the current rental rate, “I can barely cover my expenses,” he said. Kraft has listed the building at $1.14 million.
Read more at the News Gazette.
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April 2, 2009
Garden Theatre exterior rendering
WINTER GARDEN, FL — This is a computer generated “painting” of the Garden Theatre on gala opening night as rendered by Jim Lether of Salt Lake City, Utah. The 1935 movie house reopened in 2008 as a performing arts center after the theatre had been closed for more than 40 years. It was restored and is operated by the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation.