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Topic: What's the latest theatre to close or open you have heard about?
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Mark Lensenmayer
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1605
From: Upper Arlington, OH
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 03-30-2004 12:16 PM
(Note: This is not a new build...it is a former Mid States/Loews/Sony location.)
Published: Tuesday, March 30, 2004
By Doral Chenoweth
FOR THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Robin Mauney says once you visit a Cinema Grill, you won't want to go anyplace else for dinner and a movie.
For months, she's been working with contractors, moving seats and installing a 2,500-square-foot kitchen in the former Loew's nine-screen cineplex at the Continent. And although the Cinema Grill in central Ohio has missed a couple of tentative opening dates, movie fans won't have to wait much longer.
Mauney, operations director for the Atlanta-based chain, says the Continent unit will open in mid-April, 10 months after the original opening date. It will join 40 other Cinema Grills in 18 states.
Initially, the menu will offer burgers and fries, pizza, deli sandwiches and other casual-food items. Mauney predicts movie-viewers will spend about $7.50 each, excluding beer and wine.
The movies will cost $6.50. Unlike other film-food enterprises, Cinema Grill will have servers offering table service. The Cinema Grill will have two food-preparation employees on staff on weeknights and as many as six on the weekends.
Each of the eight theaters will offer square tables and a small bar for viewers who prefer to view screens from a stool.
Mauney said evening show times starting at 6 p.m. are scheduled for the first few weeks, with matinees to come in late spring. Franchisees for the Continent cineplex, 6360 Busch Blvd., are Larry Jones and Dale Obracay. For information, call 614-430-9208.
(Note posted 5/19/04: Theatre closed after 5 weeks of operation. See Ground Level Thread "Cinema Grill Closes After 5 Weeks.)
[ 05-18-2004, 07:20 PM: Message edited by: Mark Lensenmayer ]
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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-15-2004 12:52 PM
One of the largest single screen theatres (actually, the largest) in New York City is currently running its last feature. The Loew's Astor Plaza on 44th Street will close on August 5th, leaving the Clearview Ziegfeld at the last of NYC's "palaces". Also, the Loew's State, in the basement of the Virgin Megastore, will close its four screens next year, leaving Times Square without a movie-going venue for the first time in . . .well, for the first time since anyone can remember.
Here is the article from today's New York Times;
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/15/nyregion/15astor.html?ex=1090887724&ei=1&en=01a696bc540e788e
Take down the 70-millimeter reels. Switch off the Dolby. Fade to black.
New York City will lose its largest single-screen movie theater next month, when the 1,440-seat Loews Astor Plaza in Times Square closes after a 30-year run that began with "For Pete's Sake" and will apparently end with Peter Parker ("Spider-Man 2").
In a twist on the Broadway trend of the early and mid-20th century, when playhouses and vaudeville halls were turned into movie theaters, the Astor Plaza will become a live rock concert hall after a nine-month renovation.
The new use will be "consistent with the entire Times Square entertainment idea," said Steven M. Durels, senior vice president of S. L. Green Realty Corporation, owners of 1515 Broadway, between 44th and 45th Streets, which houses the Astor Plaza, the Minskoff Theater, MTV Studios and Viacom's headquarters.
"We feel it's the best of all worlds," Mr. Durels said, particularly since the alternatives were to turn the 43,000-square-foot underground space into a garage or a theme restaurant.
But the closing of the Astor Plaza, scheduled for Aug. 5, will also cost New York one more theater whose sweeping dimensions recall something of the grandeur of the Capitol, the Rivoli, the Roxy and the Strand.
There was no mighty Wurlitzer, no gilded cherubim. But there was a glittery, disco-ball 70's sensibility to the place, perfectly fitting its role as the first-run home of thundering broad-screen epics like "Superman," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "The Man Who Would Be King," "Return of the Jedi" and multiples of 007: "A View to a Kill," "Licence to Kill" and "The Living Daylights."
Ruby-red pleated curtains still greet movie patrons, who have 42 rows of battleship-gray seats to choose from, with a balcony that seems to recede to the horizon, ending at Row QQ. The screen extends about 20 yards, as wide as many subway cars are long.
In a city where 1,000-seat cinemas were once a dime a dozen, Clearview Cinemas' Ziegfeld at 141 West 54th Street will be the last to make that claim, with 1,162 seats facing the same screen. "Once the Astor Plaza closes, it will be the largest one-screen auditorium in New York," said Laura Conover, a spokeswoman for Clearview.
This dismays theater buffs like William P. Huelbig, 49, of Weehawken, N.J., who works as a law library assistant in a large Manhattan firm.
Other remaining single-screen theaters, like the Paris and the Beekman, are too small to qualify as movie palaces, he said in an e-mail message. "A palace should have at least a thousand seats, and that leaves the Ziegfeld in a class by itself," Mr. Huelbig said. "It seems wrong that a city like New York should have only one theater like that."
Was the Astor Plaza too big for the multiplex era? Or too near the Loews 42nd Street E Walk? Is "Spider-Man 2" going to close the theater or will one more extravaganza flicker to life as the curtains part? Loews Cineplex would not say. In fact, it had no comment at all, said its public relations firm.
According to the landlord, Loews did explore the possibility in 1993 of dividing the auditorium into a six-screen multiplex, but the cost was too high. The company still had 17 months left on its lease at 1515 Broadway, which S. L. Green bought out.
AEG Live, a division of AEG of Los Angeles, has signed a 15-year lease, said S. L. Green executives, who did not disclose the rent. The renovation, to be designed by David Rockwell of the Rockwell Group, is expected to begin as soon as the Astor Plaza closes. The new concert hall will open next summer. Michael Roth, the vice president for communications at AEG, said it was too early to discuss the plans in any detail.
AEG operates the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, where the Academy Awards ceremony is held. It also developed and operates the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
To prepare 1515 Broadway for rock concerts, tests were performed at up to 120 decibels. Noise from the underground auditorium will be reduced by a suspended ceiling and layered walls. Electric power and air-conditioning will be increased. A smoke-purging system will be added, as will additional access to fire stairs.
"From a technical standpoint, this was the most complicated deal the firm ever did," said Gerard Nocera, chief operating officer of S. L. Green.
The 54-story building, also known as 1 Astor Plaza, was developed in the late 60's and early 70's by Sam Minskoff & Sons on the site of the Astor Hotel. To create a clear span for the side stages and proscenium arch of the Minskoff Theater, an enormous truss was built that carries the weight of 45 office floors overhead. That permitted the construction of another column-free space three levels below.
"Somebody said, 'Why don't we put a second theater in?'" recalled Der Scutt, who designed 1 Astor Plaza as a young architect at Kahn & Jacobs. "The structure lent itself very nicely to that. It's a big theater. It had a good rake and nice sightlines."
In 1970, the Walter Reade Organization signed on to operate the movie theater, which it called the Reade. It was supposed to open on Dec. 21, 1971, with Otto Preminger's "Such Good Friends." But the debut never occurred. Reade said the theater was inadequately isolated from subway noise and vibration. The Minskoffs and their architects dismissed the problem as having been solved. Months passed. The space stayed shut.
Finally, under the management of Loews, the renamed theater opened on June 26, 1974, with "For Pete's Sake," starring Barbra Streisand. The auditorium originally had 1,500 seats.
"Astor Plaza is known as the place to see event films," said the Cinema Treasures Web site, which is found at cinematreasures.org and includes a guide to 6,150 theaters nationwide. "Because of its large size, the Plaza still draws large opening-night crowds - crowds who really know how to enjoy a movie."
But for Mr. Huelbig, the last visit on July 3 was a poignant one, as he described it to other theater buffs on Cinema Treasures.
"I sat in the balcony to get the full effect of that huge expanse of seats in front of me," he wrote. "And when the credits were over, I stayed to watch the curtains close on the last big single-screen theater in Times Square. It was as if the curtains were closing on a part of New York movie history."
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-15-2004 06:27 PM
In the late 1980s to early 1990s, the Loews Astor Plaza was often booked to run big event films from Paramount, often with 70mm prints. I recall watching a rare 70mm Dolby SR mag print of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" there.
While the Astor Plaza was not my favorite theater in New York (I still preferred the Ziefeld, even if it had 300 fewer seats) it still really sucks that this place is closing.
This issue also raises the question of exhibitors in why they cannot seem to build any "palace size" rooms in any so-called "megaplex". What are they thinking?
I've been to numerous multiplex sites with 24 to 30 screens and have often come away less-than-impressed. Honestly, there is NOTHING quite like the feeling you get when walking into a quality auditorium with over 1,000 seats. It always commands a larger scale. If I were building movie theaters, particularly in key high-traffic locations, I would have at least one screen in the complex with over 1,000 seats and 70mm projection capability.
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