posted 11-12-2003 04:16 PM                    

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The Newburgh Cinema 10 is back with a new name, new owners and $2.5 million in upgrades.

The 10-screen complex at the corner of routes 52 and 300 will reopen Friday as Showtime Cinemas.

The 40,000-square-foot building had been empty since Hoyts closed it in September 1999. A year later, plans to house a gigantic server farm -– a warehouse packed with computer servers -– on the site fizzled.

Now, the owners of Showtime Cinemas have a long-term lease with an option to buy, and they're spending $2.5 million to renovate and equip the building. It's a massive effort that's had as many as 100 tradespeople working at once.

"It's pretty much from the shell of the building up, resurrecting it," said Dave Fedeli, one of the owners.

There are new walls, new carpets, new bathrooms. By tomorrow, the 1,600 or so plush seats – $200 apiece, installed – will be installed in stadium format. Upstairs, Big Sky projection cabinets overlooking each theater resemble computer servers more than film projectors. A series of enormous film platters – like 5-foot hubcaps, holding spools of film – enable the theater to show a movie on more than one screen at the same time.

Fedeli is betting on Newburgh's busy Route 300 corridor, where one shopping center after another has opened in recent years, to support the complex.

"I'm a pretty good site guy, so hopefully I'm right on this one too," he said.

Fedeli is a third-generation movie mogul. His grandfather ran a theater, and his father built a drive-in, which Fedeli eventually bought.

"I started working for him when I was 11. I was working the ticket booth, selling tickets. I was working the snack bar, popping popcorn and stuff like that," he said. "I've always been around it, and it's been in my blood, so to speak."

Showtime Cinemas will offer $7.50 adult tickets and $5 matinees.

The theater will employ about three-dozen people, many of them kids a few years older than Fedeli when he started out.

At the other end of the spectrum there's Joanne Seymour, an assistant manager who worked at the theater back when it was run by United Artists and later Hoyts. She'd been working at a theater in Fishkill since Newburgh Cinema closed in 1999 and jumped at the opportunity to come back to the Newburgh cinema.

"I just wanted to be on this side of the river again. I didn't care who owned it or what the job was. I just wanted to be back home," she said. "It's gonna do well. It's long overdue."

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posted 12-01-2003 01:26 PM                       

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Vista cinema plans arthouse films





By:PAM KRAGEN - Staff Writer

When Krikorian Premiere Theatres opens its 15-screen Metroplex Theatre in Vista on Nov. 5, it will offer something North County movie-lovers have been craving for years ---- arthouse films.

While small, older North County theaters, such as La Paloma in Encinitas and the UltraStar Flower Hill in Del Mar, have embraced arthouse films in recent years, the region's multiplexes have played it safe with mostly mainstream fare.

But Randall L. Blaum, spokesman for Redondo Beach-based Krikorian, said the new Vista Village theater will emphasize diversity. Mainstream films will show in the bulk of the Metroplex auditoriums (which range from 150 to 500 seats), but there will always be room for an arthouse film or two.

"We're committed to providing specialty films, foreign films and documentaries, as well as the major releases. We hope to engage the widest possible audience," Blaum said, adding that he hopes to establish annual festivals at the Vista theater for both foreign films and locally made independent films. "We've done this at our other theaters and they've been hugely successful. I see no reason why it won't work just as well in Vista."

Some of the films now showing at other Krikorian locations include the avian documentary "Winged Migration," the New Zealand arthouse hit "Whale Rider" and the surf film "Step Into Liquid."

One reason niche films have worked so well in Krikorian's other locations (especially Redlands and Buena Park) is that the managers try to serve the needs of the local public. For example, if Vista's large Latino community showed a desire to support Spanish-language films, they would be added to the regular mix.

Blaum is so interested in finding out what theatergoers want to see at the new Metroplex that he has set up a special e-mail account (arthousefilms@rbcww.com) that North County Times readers can use to send him their thoughts on what they'd like to see at the soon-to-open multiplex.

The upscale Metroplex theater will have 3,600 rocking chair stadium-style seats, screens up to 60 feet wide, marble-finish floors, imported Italian crystal chandeliers, specialty concessions and a "sky lounge" and birthday party room for private events. Admission will be between $9 and $9.50.

In the week before its grand opening, the Krikorian Metroplex will host a series of special events to introduce itself to the community, including a "safe trick-or-treat" night on Halloween and charity screenings with $1 concessions. The grand opening will be celebrated with a massive prize giveaway with hundreds of items ranging from $25 gift certificates to a $3,000 Klipsch home theater system to a $10,000 shopping spree at North County Ford.

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