The company taking over the Maplewood Theater’s lease is CinemaLab which also owns The Village at the SOPAC in South Orange. Cine-Lab is motion picture film processing company in Massachusetts, they have nothing to do with theater ownership.
The Township of Union, NEVER purchased or took ownership of the Union Theaters at least not according to the property records (See link below). Currently it is owned by a company called Stuyvesant Building LLC. out of Kings Point, New York (That’s Nassau County on Long Island) which purchased the property in 2015, previous to that it was owned by Mousa Kafash in 2014 and prior to 2014 it was owned by Spiros Papas of Westwood, NJ.
and by the way the Tap Into Union article was wrong. I don’t know where they got their information but Monmouth County maintains an extensive records of every property tax record in almost every county (Ocean County being the only exception) so I would go by that and not some online website which has no formal standing as a member of the press community, its just a bunch of residents writing articles for their local towns.
An interesting factoid about the Trans-Lux East is that starting on February 1, 1980 Penthouse International which at the time owned Penthouse Magazine leased out the Trans-Lux East in order to screen their controversial film Caligula since main stream circuits like General Cinemas, RKO Century Warner and United Artists etc… refused to screen the films due to its controversial nature and the fact that the film’s executive producer and Penthouse Magazine owner/publisher Bob Guccione refused to submit it to the Motion Picture Association of America for fear that it would get an X rating. Caligula had some big hit actors including Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and Sir John Gielgud.
As of November 2020, National Amusements (Owned by the Redstone family) still owns the property at 8020 State Route 9 & 35 in Sayreville. According to the current property tax records, National Amusement pays a property tax bill of $156,990.00 per year to the Borough of Sayreville. That’s a lot of money to lose considering that its been a non-revenue generating property for going on 15 years now.
Why doesn’t the borough just do what the City of Bloomfield did with the old Schering-Plough pharmaceutical campus buy it for a dollar with some tax incentives and then sell the property to a retailer like Home Depot, Lowes, ShopRite or whoever for a million dollars or they can use eminent domain (For the record I hate the use of eminent domain) take over the property National Amusement gets nothing and they lose everything.
IIRC my former boss John Monsport who I worked for during my days at GCC Essex Green in West Orange owned AmericanPlace Movies but apparently has now left the theater circuit business and works with his wife as licensed real estate agents.
@jkonka to answer your question according to the Borough of Sayerville Tax Collector’s online records the property in question continues to be owned by National Amusements out of Dedham, MA. They are also the majority owner of cable network operator Viacom and U.S. radio and television broadcaster CBS Corporation.
Interestingly, even though the theater has been closed for quite sometime and the property seemingly abandoned they are still on the hook for property taxes which currently is $139,410.00 per year which means that for the past 10 years they have spent approximately $1,394,100.00 in property taxes for a dead business.
According to current property tax records the City of Newark sold Symphony Hall to the County of Essex for just over $5 million dollars and it is now owned and operated by the Essex County Improvement Authority a semi-autonomous county agency which also owns and operates Essex County Airport in Caldwell/Fairfield. IMHO it looks like Joe D. and Essex County got quite a bargain for Symphony Hall.
Newark Symphony Hall has a long proud history of being the center of Northern New Jersey broadcasting.
Bremer Broadcasting based two of its broadcast properties in Symphony Hall, WATV Channel 13 a commercial broadcaster and WAAT-FM 94.7FM which broadcast jazz, classical and easy listening music, Bremer would later sell the stations to National Telefilm Associates who changed the TV station call-letters to WNTA-TV and WNTA-FM and when NTA split up its holdings Channel 13 became public broadcaster WNET owned by Educational Broadcasting Corporation who moved the station from Symphony Hall to new facilities on West 33rd Street in Midtown Manhattan in New York City while maintaining a small office and studio at Gateway Center across from Newark Penn Station in order to be in compliance with their FCC City of License requirement.
WNTA-FM was sold to a small religious broadcaster Family Stations Inc. who changed FM station’s call-letters to WFME and moved the studios, offices and transmitter from Symphony Hall to 289 Mount Pleasant Avenue in the suburban town of West Orange.
In 1965 a small little known independent english language television station WNJU-TV Channel 47 signed on the air from the space which was formerly occupied by WATV/WNTA/WNET and WATV-FM/WNTA-FM, In 1984 WNJU went spanish joining the NetSpan television network which would later change their name to Telemundo. WNJU moved from Symphony Hall in 1989 to Industrial Road in Teterboro and then 14 years later they moved again, this time to the former broadcast facilities of sister cable network CNBC (CNBC has since moved to Engelwood Cliffs).
I miss the Union Drive-In. Anyone know the name of the woman who used to do the telephone recording? She had a really gravelly voice (probably from too many years of smoking) which went something like “This is a recorded message from the Union Drive-In Theater located on Route 22 Eastbound Lane in Union. The box office opens at 6pm our features are… (Name of movies then announced), Admission is $3 for adults, children under 10 are free thank you for calling.”
Just a where are they now moment, John Monsport the longtime manager of the Essex Green I-II-III and his wife who was the manager at the Rusty Scupper restaurant (now a Courtyard by Marriott hotel) now run the AmericanPlace Movies on Route 202 in Flemington.
My mind is totally spacing and I could be wrong but I seem to recall that Cinema 23 like the Colony in Livingston was originally part of the United Artists Theatres circuit?
There are some changes ahead for the Essex Green Cinema. AMC is closing the 13 year old theater as a Nineplex in the beginning of August and will tenatively reopen it in December as the state’s first Fork & Screen theater. According to the West Orange Patch website (See link below) AMC will reduce the theater capacity by 65 percent with the remaining 35 percent used for luxury dining. Admission to the Fork and Dine will be restricted to patrons 18 years of age and older unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. The Cinema Suites only are for guests 21 years of age or older.
AMC Theater to Close, Undergo Renovation as State’s First ‘Fork & Screen' View link
I was employed by the GCC Essex Green Cinemas from September 1987 to September 1988 and enjoyed working with a lot of the people there. BTW does anyone happen to know what became of our two projectionists Jimmy Heckle and George (I can’t remember his last name).
Here’s a piece of trivia that I’m sure none of you knew, the Motion Picture Machine Operators Union ran their local out of the 2nd floor of this theater and it’s funny not only did they represent the projectionists at a few porn houses but also at most if not all of the major theater chains in Northern New Jersey including Cineplex Odeon, General Cinema and United Artists. Prior to moving to Newark the union was based in an adjacent office in the projection booth at the Millburn Theater in Millburn which I believe was around 1986-1987. The union has since been disbanned.
Hey movie534 I have a couple of questions, who was your theater manager and did Richie Harrington work there when you were the projectionist? I worked at Essex Green in West Orange from Sept ‘86 to Sept '87 and occassionally he got pawned off to us when our manager John Monsport or the assistant manager John Boyd weren’t available to work.
The company taking over the Maplewood Theater’s lease is CinemaLab which also owns The Village at the SOPAC in South Orange. Cine-Lab is motion picture film processing company in Massachusetts, they have nothing to do with theater ownership.
Actually a Starbucks now sits on that location. https://goo.gl/maps/7uZHLTxKW4KfMXqk6
The Township of Union, NEVER purchased or took ownership of the Union Theaters at least not according to the property records (See link below). Currently it is owned by a company called Stuyvesant Building LLC. out of Kings Point, New York (That’s Nassau County on Long Island) which purchased the property in 2015, previous to that it was owned by Mousa Kafash in 2014 and prior to 2014 it was owned by Spiros Papas of Westwood, NJ.
https://tax1.co.monmouth.nj.us/cgi-bin/m4.cgi?district=2019&l02=20190290300016_____M
and by the way the Tap Into Union article was wrong. I don’t know where they got their information but Monmouth County maintains an extensive records of every property tax record in almost every county (Ocean County being the only exception) so I would go by that and not some online website which has no formal standing as a member of the press community, its just a bunch of residents writing articles for their local towns.
An interesting factoid about the Trans-Lux East is that starting on February 1, 1980 Penthouse International which at the time owned Penthouse Magazine leased out the Trans-Lux East in order to screen their controversial film Caligula since main stream circuits like General Cinemas, RKO Century Warner and United Artists etc… refused to screen the films due to its controversial nature and the fact that the film’s executive producer and Penthouse Magazine owner/publisher Bob Guccione refused to submit it to the Motion Picture Association of America for fear that it would get an X rating. Caligula had some big hit actors including Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and Sir John Gielgud.
A Tijuana Flats Mexican restaurant now sits at this location.
As of November 2020, National Amusements (Owned by the Redstone family) still owns the property at 8020 State Route 9 & 35 in Sayreville. According to the current property tax records, National Amusement pays a property tax bill of $156,990.00 per year to the Borough of Sayreville. That’s a lot of money to lose considering that its been a non-revenue generating property for going on 15 years now.
Why doesn’t the borough just do what the City of Bloomfield did with the old Schering-Plough pharmaceutical campus buy it for a dollar with some tax incentives and then sell the property to a retailer like Home Depot, Lowes, ShopRite or whoever for a million dollars or they can use eminent domain (For the record I hate the use of eminent domain) take over the property National Amusement gets nothing and they lose everything.
According to their website this theater is only open two days a week (Friday and Saturday) with only one showing per day at 19:00 hours (7:00pm).
IIRC my former boss John Monsport who I worked for during my days at GCC Essex Green in West Orange owned AmericanPlace Movies but apparently has now left the theater circuit business and works with his wife as licensed real estate agents.
@jkonka to answer your question according to the Borough of Sayerville Tax Collector’s online records the property in question continues to be owned by National Amusements out of Dedham, MA. They are also the majority owner of cable network operator Viacom and U.S. radio and television broadcaster CBS Corporation.
Interestingly, even though the theater has been closed for quite sometime and the property seemingly abandoned they are still on the hook for property taxes which currently is $139,410.00 per year which means that for the past 10 years they have spent approximately $1,394,100.00 in property taxes for a dead business.
According to current property tax records the City of Newark sold Symphony Hall to the County of Essex for just over $5 million dollars and it is now owned and operated by the Essex County Improvement Authority a semi-autonomous county agency which also owns and operates Essex County Airport in Caldwell/Fairfield. IMHO it looks like Joe D. and Essex County got quite a bargain for Symphony Hall.
Newark Symphony Hall has a long proud history of being the center of Northern New Jersey broadcasting.
Bremer Broadcasting based two of its broadcast properties in Symphony Hall, WATV Channel 13 a commercial broadcaster and WAAT-FM 94.7FM which broadcast jazz, classical and easy listening music, Bremer would later sell the stations to National Telefilm Associates who changed the TV station call-letters to WNTA-TV and WNTA-FM and when NTA split up its holdings Channel 13 became public broadcaster WNET owned by Educational Broadcasting Corporation who moved the station from Symphony Hall to new facilities on West 33rd Street in Midtown Manhattan in New York City while maintaining a small office and studio at Gateway Center across from Newark Penn Station in order to be in compliance with their FCC City of License requirement.
WNTA-FM was sold to a small religious broadcaster Family Stations Inc. who changed FM station’s call-letters to WFME and moved the studios, offices and transmitter from Symphony Hall to 289 Mount Pleasant Avenue in the suburban town of West Orange.
In 1965 a small little known independent english language television station WNJU-TV Channel 47 signed on the air from the space which was formerly occupied by WATV/WNTA/WNET and WATV-FM/WNTA-FM, In 1984 WNJU went spanish joining the NetSpan television network which would later change their name to Telemundo. WNJU moved from Symphony Hall in 1989 to Industrial Road in Teterboro and then 14 years later they moved again, this time to the former broadcast facilities of sister cable network CNBC (CNBC has since moved to Engelwood Cliffs).
I miss the Union Drive-In. Anyone know the name of the woman who used to do the telephone recording? She had a really gravelly voice (probably from too many years of smoking) which went something like “This is a recorded message from the Union Drive-In Theater located on Route 22 Eastbound Lane in Union. The box office opens at 6pm our features are… (Name of movies then announced), Admission is $3 for adults, children under 10 are free thank you for calling.”
and BTW the Essex Green I-II-III address was not Rooney Circle, at least when I worked there all our mail came to a Prospect Avenue address.
Just a where are they now moment, John Monsport the longtime manager of the Essex Green I-II-III and his wife who was the manager at the Rusty Scupper restaurant (now a Courtyard by Marriott hotel) now run the AmericanPlace Movies on Route 202 in Flemington.
My mind is totally spacing and I could be wrong but I seem to recall that Cinema 23 like the Colony in Livingston was originally part of the United Artists Theatres circuit?
There are some changes ahead for the Essex Green Cinema. AMC is closing the 13 year old theater as a Nineplex in the beginning of August and will tenatively reopen it in December as the state’s first Fork & Screen theater. According to the West Orange Patch website (See link below) AMC will reduce the theater capacity by 65 percent with the remaining 35 percent used for luxury dining. Admission to the Fork and Dine will be restricted to patrons 18 years of age and older unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. The Cinema Suites only are for guests 21 years of age or older.
AMC Theater to Close, Undergo Renovation as State’s First ‘Fork & Screen'
View link
I was employed by the GCC Essex Green Cinemas from September 1987 to September 1988 and enjoyed working with a lot of the people there. BTW does anyone happen to know what became of our two projectionists Jimmy Heckle and George (I can’t remember his last name).
Here’s a piece of trivia that I’m sure none of you knew, the Motion Picture Machine Operators Union ran their local out of the 2nd floor of this theater and it’s funny not only did they represent the projectionists at a few porn houses but also at most if not all of the major theater chains in Northern New Jersey including Cineplex Odeon, General Cinema and United Artists. Prior to moving to Newark the union was based in an adjacent office in the projection booth at the Millburn Theater in Millburn which I believe was around 1986-1987. The union has since been disbanned.
Hey movie534 I have a couple of questions, who was your theater manager and did Richie Harrington work there when you were the projectionist? I worked at Essex Green in West Orange from Sept ‘86 to Sept '87 and occassionally he got pawned off to us when our manager John Monsport or the assistant manager John Boyd weren’t available to work.