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Topic: What's the latest theatre to close or open you have heard about?
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Ron Yost
Master Film Handler
Posts: 344
From: Paso Robles, CA
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 01-20-2006 04:22 PM
The historic Keith-Albee Theatre, Huntington, W.V. goes dark monday.
"Keith-Albee closes curtain on movies
Marshall University Foundation plans to keep theater open as performing arts venue
By Dave Lavender
Copyright The Herald-Dispatch, 2006
Friday, Jan. 20, 2006
HUNTINGTON -- For the past half dozen years, Derek Hyman has known it would happen someday soon.
Still, that doesn't prepare Hyman for what lies in the days ahead.
After Sunday, Hyman, whose grandfather built the Keith-Albee Theatre in the 1920s, will watch the Keith-Albee go dark -- no longer showing daily movies at the four-screen theater which boasts a main auditorium that seats 1,800.
And on Feb. 1, Hyman, president of his family-owned Greater Huntington Theatre Corp., will hand over the keys to the building to the Marshall University Foundation so that the community can open a new chapter in the theater's history, trying to keep it open as a performing arts only venue.
"My grandfather finished it in 1928, and our family's been in there ever since," Hyman said Thursday, trying not to be emotional. "That means we've got a lot of stuff in there."
One of the country's few historic picture palaces of that size and era still showing first-run films, the Thomas Lamb-designed vaudeville theater and movie house will continue to host the Marshall Artists Series and other performing arts events.
Angela Jones, marketing director of the Artists Series, said they are thankful the series is staying put in the grand theater.
"The grand nature of our shows really suits the grandiose, decorative state of the Keith-Albee," Jones said. "It has been our major home, and it means a lot. People love the experience of going to the opulent theater to see the Broadway show or the ballet and to see shows in their natural habitat."
The closing comes just two weeks after the Greater Huntington Theatre Corp. shut the doors at The Camelot, a smaller, sister theater in downtown Huntington.
The Camelot closed on Friday, Jan. 6, and Hyman said he will announce in about three or four weeks new plans for the Keith's sister four-screen theater in downtown Huntington, the Cinema, 1023 4th Ave.
Movie business at the Keith-Albee has been in decline since November 2004, when the three downtown theaters and their 10 screens began sharing distribution of new films with the new Pullman 16, a Marquee Cinemas-owned theater on 3rd Avenue at Pullman Square.
Afraid that shared distribution would decimate his business, Hyman declined to host the Marshall Artists shows at the Keith-Albee in the spring of 2005 sending the Artists Series into venues around the city including the Veterans Memorial Field House, the Joan C. Edwards Performing Arts Center and the Renaissance Theatre at the Huntington High Renaissance Center. But he signed the Artists Series back up after business got better, buying time so that he could work out a deal with the foundation.
Hyman said they were hoping to get their fair share of films, at least 45 percent to 50 percent of the new films, but that number has been more like 35 percent. And blockbusters, such as "King Kong" and "Star Wars," have been funneled to the new theater.
Originally, Hyman, had been approached about putting a cinema into Pullman Square. But he said the deal then was that it would be with $4 million of the GHTC company's own money to build a theater.
Hyman, whose family also owns such theaters as the 11-screen Park Place Stadium Cinemas, 600 Washington St., E., Charleston, and which is building Fountain Place Cinema 8 (set to open in March in Logan, W.Va.) couldn't take the gamble.
And Hyman said that was before Pullman received a boost from a state economic development grant to help build the cinemas.
"That has been a little hard to swallow," Hyman said. "State economic development money was used to build the theaters that are leased to Marquee."
While he and the community cope with the closing the historic Keith's movie theaters -- which costs eight part-time workers their jobs -- it will take about a week to pull the projection and sound equipment out of its side theaters. For now, the projection and sound equipment will be left in the main auditorium so that the Keith-Albee can still host Marshall's Spring International Film Festival, which runs Feb. 17-23.
But the Third Annual Appalachian Film Festival, set for April 27-29, will move back over to the Cinema after using the Keith-Albee to show its special feature films.
Jones, who helps book the MU film festival, said she's thankful for another chance to see film at the theater where she saw such seminal films as "E.T.," "Star Wars" and "Clash of the Titans" growing up.
The theater has hosted such events as Dustin Hoffman for the premiere of "Rain Man," and John Witek and Deb Novak's Emmy Award-winning MU plane crash documentary, "Ashes to Glory."
A local film premiere in March 2005 for Francesca Karle's documentary, "On the River's Edge," drew 1,200 to a red-carpet opening and garnered the first-time filmmaker national press.
"Some of my fondest memories was seeing the biggest films of my generation at the Keith-Albee," Jones said. "I definitely think that will be a void not seeing films on the large screen in the Keith."
That sentiment is echoed by Novak, a Huntington native who grew up watching films at the Keith-Albee.
Novak got a film degree from New York University and came back home to tell the stories of her town in film from Blenko to the Marshall plane crash and most recently, her production in progress, "The Cam Henderson Story."
"There is nothing like it in the world," Novak said of the Keith-Albee, where she and Witek held the world premiere of "Ashes to Glory." "It is the very best place because we just don't have any picture palaces like that in the world. They aren't making them any more. We have to take care of the ones that we have and preserve them."
Link to original article .. with pictures
Sad.
Ron Yost
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Dennis Benjamin
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1445
From: Denton, MD
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 01-22-2006 07:54 PM
Long link
Closing theatre ousts church
By Pat Beall
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 21, 2006
JUPITER — The curtain is coming down on New Hope Church.
Just six weeks into a one-year lease with Connecticut-based Crown Theatres, the tiny north county congregation is being ushered out of Crown Abacoa 16, where it has held Sunday services since Dec. 10.
"Tuesday afternoon I got a call from the Crown Theatres corporate offices, and they shared with me they were closing the theater as of the end of this month," the Rev. John Bartz said Friday.
Crown Theatres officials didn't return repeated calls Friday for comment. Previous speculation swirling about the imminent demise of the cinema adjacent to Roger Dean Stadium has been met with denials from its owner.
"We are just thrilled with the numbers coming out of the complex," George Smith, Crown's director of operations, said last September. Ticket sales were strong, he said, and looming competition from Cobb Theatres' 16-screen multiplex in Palm Beach Gardens wasn't a concern. The new multiplex opened in the Downtown at the Gardens last month.
"At this point, we have no desire to leave," Smith said four months ago of the theater opened in Abacoa Town Center in May 2001.
In New York, the real estate firm representing Abacoa said it has no reason to think Crown intends to shutter its box office here. "I have heard that rumor for years," said Keith Walker, senior vice president of Brockwood Realty.
The reverend had, too.
"I had been assured that Crown, despite all the rumors, was not closing and was doing well and had no plans or intentions of closing or selling," Bartz said. Based on that, he signed a one year, $250-a-week lease on behalf of the 38-member New Hope congregation, which is part of the Wesleyan Church.
It seemed like a good fit. The church opened just as The Chronicles of Narnia, the movie based on Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis' classic work, debuted on the big screen. And the location appealed to the nearby Abacoa residents Bartz wanted to reach. Even after the church was given its walking papers, "I wanted to see if we could continue to rent, but they won't tell us who's buying it," he said.
Hearing that nearby Florida Atlantic University had been interested in acquiring the property — the theater's tiered seating is similar to lecture halls — Bartz contacted the college to see if it was the buyer.
But a spokeswoman for the university said FAU hasn't spoken to Crown about buying the property in six months, and even that contact was brief.
Schools are one rental option for New Hope, as are community centers. Bartz said he'll be looking at those but given the success his congregation enjoyed at Crown Abacoa, he has not entirely given up on theater seating. He's asking Cobb Theaters, Crown's new multiplex competition, if they might consider working with the church.
[ 02-01-2006, 10:16 PM: Message edited by: Adam Martin ]
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David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 01-30-2006 11:46 AM
Egyptian Theatre in Coos Bay, OR
Ancient Egyptian: Coos Bay residents hope to save historic movie palace
By Winston Ross
The Register-Guard
Published: Sunday, January 29, 2006
COOS BAY - It was the discovery of King Tut's tomb in 1922 that kicked off the nationwide craze for all things Egyptian. But the fad died out a long time ago, leaving behind only a few scattered relics. Coos Bay's Egyptian Theatre is one of them.
The theater shut its doors for good last month, a victim of the age of the multiplex. The Egyptian is an anachronism in a moviegoing era dominated by digital sound in fancy new theaters or high-definition televisions in the comforts of home. The 80-year-old theater with its four-keyboard Wurlitzer organ sits vacant in downtown Coos Bay; "for sale" signs have replaced the movie posters.
But there is new hope for this old venue. Earlier this month, Coos Bay's urban renewal agency offered the Ashland-based company that owns the Egyptian $400,000 to buy the place, and a group of nostalgic citizens quickly banded together in support, promising a spirited fundraising drive to get the Egyptian reopened, even if it never plays another feature film.
It may be the theater's only chance at survival. Its owner, Coming Attractions, shut the Egyptian down because the company expanded its theater at North Bend's Pony Village Mall from four screens to 11. Even before that, the company had stopped showing new movies at the Egyptian, causing attendance to plummet.
Company President Larry McClellan refuses to discuss the matter - "I'm busy running a corporation," he barked in response to a recent telephone call from The Register-Guard - but it's clear, say city officials and the residents who are fighting to save the Egyptian, that this town isn't considered big enough for two movie theaters.
"When they went to 11 screens at Pony Village, they didn't need three at the Egyptian anymore," said Michael Tribble, a member of the Save the Egyptian committee. "But when they were showing first-run movies, it seemed to be doing quite well. Most people will tell you the Egyptian is a favorite place for them to go. We're living with a theater that's one of the last of its kind."
The Egyptian's creator was a descendent of one of the area's first settlers. Charles Noble spent $200,000 - no small sum in 1920s dollars - to convert his Motor Inn, an enormous service station and garage, into a theater.
Designer Lee Arden Thomas chose an Egyptian theme, decorating the interior with piers adorned with papyrus blossoms and ceiling lights in wrought-iron frames with hooded cobras, stairways with 8-foot-tall pharaohs and organ screens with kneeling figures in Egyptian garb, according to the book "Encore: a history of theaters and theater on Oregon's southwest coast."
"It's like walking into a palace," said David Engholm, another Save the Egyptian member. "It takes you to a different place in time."
The building's centerpiece is the Wurlitzer organ, connected to a series of pipes with bellows pushing sound through its reeds. From four keyboards, an organist can control the Wurlitzer's many instruments, including chimes, bird whistles, a xylophone, marimba, drums, cymbal, triangle and castanets.
"It's the only originally installed Wurlitzer left in a theater in Oregon," said Tom DeLay, a historian with the American Theatre Organ Society, who has himself played the Egyptian's organ twice. "It has some specialties in it that most instruments like it don't have. It's a survivor."
Other Wurlitzers were sold as scrap or to churches, with the advent of "talkies" in 1929. The Egyptian's remained. After World War II and the rise of the American automobile, suburban movie theaters drew audiences from old downtown venues. Parking lots and condominiums replaced them.
"People weren't going to movie palaces," said Richard Sklenar, executive director of the Theatre Historical Society of America. "The problem with an older downtown theater is they are extremely costly to maintain."
Those who would save the Egyptian are well aware of this reality. That's why when a local nonprofit organization, Little Theatre on the Bay, approached the city last fall about a grant to buy the place, the intent was to change the Egyptian's focus. The group planned to host live performances and concerts, screen silent or foreign films, and maybe sponsor an independent film festival.
Negotiating with Coming Attractions was tricky, said Jeff Cragun, director of Little Theatre's physical plant. The company wanted to ensure that the Egyptian didn't compete with the Pony Village theaters. Still, Cragun added, the company was and is "committed to seeing that the Egyptian stays in this community, and is preserved," he said.
The two parties even inked a tentative deal. The Egyptian was appraised at $1.2 million. Coming Attractions wanted half of that in cash, calling the remaining $600,000 a donation to Little Theatre, a tax write-off. That would allow the nonprofit group to hold a "matching" fundraising drive, encouraging other donors to equal Coming Attractions' "contribution."
But the city threw a wrench into the deal, Cragun said.
"The city wanted to buy the building," he said. "Coming Attractions got no tax benefit and we wouldn't have had that matching ability. We would have started out hamstrung, from the beginning."
When Little Theatre withdrew its offer, the Egyptian's fate looked bleak.
Peeved that the city had gotten in the way, Coming Attractions' Chief Executive Officer John Schweiger told city officials that if he didn't have an offer from them by the end of January, the price would increase, month by month. And no "first-run" films would be allowed.
At its first meeting of the year, the city's Urban Renewal Agency - all of whose members are on the City Council - decided to offer Coming Attractions $400,000 for the theater, along with a promise not to show movies less than five years old. At the meeting, councilors bashed the company for being hard-nosed negotiators.
"Coming Attractions is being difficult to deal with," said Mayor Joe Benetti. "They gave us deadlines. They weren't going to allow us to show any movies in there."
Benetti says it's unfair to blame the city for the Little Theatre deal falling apart. With taxpayer money involved, things needed to proceed slowly, and ultimately, city officials thought it better to put the theater in the hands of a group with broader interests, such as Save the Egyptian. Coming Attractions' rush to strike a deal made things awkward, he said.
Things are still awkward. Coming Attractions' executives demanded an apology for negative statements city councilors have made at recent meetings, and countered the $400,000 offer by not budging from its original figure of $600,000, plus a deed restriction preventing any screenings less than 10 years old.
Still, the talks are ongoing, and the theater's would-be saviors remain hopeful. It could cost several million dollars to bring the Egyptian up to code, they reason, which limits the number of potential buyers.
"Who's going to want to buy it if they can't show movies?" Tribble said. "It will cost too much to convert it into something else. Who are they going to sell it to, except to someone like us?"
Even if a deal can be reached, however, the challenge of keeping the Egyptian alive won't be over. Without blockbuster films to keep it profitable, breaking even will be a constant struggle.
"You've got to have somebody with very deep pockets, somebody as stupid as I am, to run the Egyptian as an art house. They're going to lose a lot of money," predicted Florence developer James Genereaux, who owned Florence's Harbor Theatre before it was sold and turned into a shoe store. "To run an art theater, you need a minimum of 250,000 people and a university. The Bijou survives in Eugene because they have the University of Oregon right there, and they're drawing from a quarter-million people."
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Anslem Rayburn
Master Film Handler
Posts: 476
From: Yuma, AZ, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 02-01-2006 02:50 PM
From the article above
quote:
My movie, my theater
As the lights go out, a man remembers
Friday, January 27, 2006
By Phil Arvia
ColumnistSomewhere in my head, there is a screenplay about an usher at a movie theater during the blockbuster era of "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones."
It isn't a serious film. We're talking summer popcorn flick all the way.
It's about chasing candy girls and avoiding managers. It's about hoodwinking doormen and sneaking in your friends.
It's about trysts in the stockroom, beer in the locker room and filling an empty drinking straw box with popcorn to take your break in the back row, again, to scan for the image of R2D2 allegedly hidden in the hieroglyphics on the wall of the snake pit scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
It's about loving movies, and a movie theater, and I was supposed to write it one day, and I might still. But if that movie ever gets made, it's going to have to open somewhere besides Calumet City.
River Oaks Theatres 1 & 4 — you might know them as 9 & 10 — had its last opening Thursday, on the day they closed for good. A couple dozen people showed up to watch a manager, who is going to have to find a new job soon, hack through the lid of a copper container buried beneath a plaque on the sidewalk in front of the box office.
That time capsule was supposed to be opened on Memorial Day, 2019 — 50 years after it was placed in the ground by employees back when River Oaks Theatre opened in 1969. I promised myself long ago I'd be there when it opened, and Thursday's closing of all the remaining theaters at River Oaks — they are slated for demolition — meant I had to show a little early.
I was an usher from 1979 through 1984 at what was then known as River Oaks 1 & 4.
In July '79, those houses were playing "Rocky II" and "The Main Event" when I first donned burgundy blazer and clip-on tie as a Plitt Theaters usher. Today, they are dark, and on Thursday, there was one person I absolutely knew would be on hand to watch that copper coffin at last give up its secrets.
Pam Imes, a 53-year-old Burnham resident, was a candy girl back when I was an usher. And before. And after.
She started at River Oaks on Memorial Day 1969 — the day the time capsule was sealed — and worked there through December 1997.
"I missed it when they put it in the ground," she said of the time capsule. "I wanted to see what was in there and take one last look around before they tear the place down."
On the first score, everyone was disappointed. The box, about a foot deep and was half-filled with murky green water. There were a lot of wet newspapers at the bottom, some reel-to-reel tapes and some letters.
Charlyne Haub's son Bill wrote one of the letters when he was the co-valedictorian of Thornton Fractional South High School's class of '69.
"I remember him writing about the unrest and the students of the day," said Charlyne, now 77 and living in Highland, Ind. "When I told him they were digging it up, he said, 'Go see.'
"I did, and what did I see? A bunch of water. It's disappointing now, but this theater was quite a thing then."
It was — more than 1,100 seats in the first house, and another 900 when No. 4 was added. Put 2,000 movie seats in one building now and you'd have six screens.
Back then, you had a couple of dozen teenage boys herding the crowds — none of whom had cable and only a few of whom had VCRs — into theaters that kept the same films for weeks at a time. And you had an equal number of teenage girls serving their popcorn, and soda, and candy.
Toss in a couple of bosses only a little older and making not much more money, and you had a party. Sure, you had rules, but you also had a million ways to break them.
Maybe you started small. Maybe you replaced your company-issued clip-on with a skinny black piano key tie from Spencer's Gifts, or maybe you propped open the back door for a couple of friends. Or maybe you took a little extra time in the stock room when Mary O'Connell, the cutest Irish candy girl in the history of Dolton, made the candy list and came back to help you load it on the dolly.
The next thing you knew, you were sitting on a speaker platform behind the screen, watching "Pink Floyd: The Wall" backward while indulging in some of the things that no doubt inspired the film.
I went behind the screen Thursday and found where I'd carved my name into the sound-proofing on the back wall in 1981. I looked way up high and found the work of another usher, who on a sad December night almost 26 years ago leaned from a ladder and used a broom handle to inscribe "John W. Lennon 1940-1980" halfway up the wall behind the 85-foot screen.
Inside the theater, I walked around and remembered all the work we did while still managing to play.
The first "Star Trek" opened at Theatre No. 1 in '79, and though other movies would do better sustained business, I still remember its opening weekend as the most hectic. The next year we had "The Empire Strikes Back," and after that, "Raiders."
I still think the biggest sustained laugh I've ever heard in a movie theater came in 1982, during the second weekend of "Porky's." I still think the hottest thing I've ever seen in a theater was Cheryl, this kind of shy candy girl, sneak into the back hallway every time "Comfortably Numb" came on during "The Wall" to sing when she thought no one was watching.
I remember the popcorn I swept and the Coke canisters I lugged and the signs I changed. And the movie opening that was to be my triumphant return to this one-horse town.
Well, if the opening never happens, at least I've got the ending to my movie now:
A man finds himself on a sidewalk, watching someone bludgeon open a copper box.
And suddenly, a woman, who looks a lot like Mary O'Connell, locks eyes with our hero across an open time capsule ...
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Jeffry L. Johnson
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 809
From: Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Registered: Apr 2000
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posted 02-03-2006 01:06 PM
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Tuesday, 2006 January 17
Page B2
article no longer available at cleveland.com
quote:
Closed theater draws interest
April McClellan-Copeland
Plain Dealer Reporter
Aurora - When the Marquee Cinemas opened a 10-screen theater 18 months ago, it gave Cindi Delbrocco's teenagers and their friends a safe place to hang out on rainy days and weekends.
So when the theater closed last month, it left a void for Delbrocco's teens, who live in nearby Reminderville, as well as others who live close enough to walk to the theater.
"It was a wonderful place for them to go," Delbrocco said. "It was friendly, clean and a nice place to go see a movie. Then afterwards the kids could go across the parking lot to Starbucks. I was so excited for them, but now I'm sad to see it go."
The Marquee Cinema at Barrington Town Center had regional appeal, said Jennifer Natale, executive director of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce. Residents of Bainbridge, Hiram, Mantua, Garrretsville, Streetsboro and other Portage and Summit County cities used the theater, Natale said.
Marquee Cinemas Inc., recently closed the Aurora theater and two others operated on property owned by Developers Diversified Inc., said Scott Schroeder, vice president of marketing and communications for Developers Diversified. Marquee also closed theaters in Tiffin and Irving, Texas, he said.
Aurora Mayor Lynn McGill said ticket sales were not what Marquee Cinemas anticipated.
Area teenagers may not have to wait very long for a replacement. Several theater operators are interested in all three locations, Schroeder said.
"When we became aware that Marquee Cinemas was making a financial decision to close, we started aggressively marketing the space to other theater operators," Schroeder said, "With all of the housing in the area it had a good draw. I am confident we will get another theater."
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