What's the latest theatre to close or open you have heard about?

[Leo Enticknap]

Krikorian Theatres started a huge project in Menifee, Ca. back in 2015 and never finished the building. [...] Oh well, we have over 100,000 people and NO theatre.

It's close enough to the Starlight at Dos Lagos and options in Corona and Riverside, that I guess the appetite for taking the risk wasn't there. And if you're willing to take your life in your hands and drive the Ortega Highway, there is the new Metrolux in San Clemente. Though admittedly, a round trip on what is claimed to be the USA's most dangerous stretch of road just to see a movie is a bit of an ask.

Did construction on the Menifee site cease during the pandemic? Krikorian sold their theater in Redlands to Studio Movie Grill around that time: I'm guessing that the pandemic must have hit them hard (AFAIK, that place was doing pretty well, and I doubt they'd have wanted to lose it voluntarily), and that they might have run out of money.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Tonight was the final showing for the Skowhegan Drive-in Theatre, Skowhegan, Maine.

From the cited article "The pending closure follows the sale of the Saco Drive-In in 2022, which was the state’s oldest drive-in (1939) and one of the oldest in the country. "

A drive-in in 1939 is pretty impressive.

[Don Furr]

Krikorian Theatres started a huge project in Menifee, Ca. back in 2015 and never finished the building. The city has put a lien on the property and is getting ready to tear it down. It was reported to have the largest screen in the
state. Oh well, we have over 100,000 people and NO theatre.



theater walls 9-22-23.jpg

[Rick Cohen]

Tonight was the final showing for the Skowhegan Drive-in Theatre, Skowhegan, Maine.

[William Kucharski]

Milwaukee Landmark screen Downer closes suddenly after nearly 108 years.

[Leo Enticknap]

and that the Bartola company was not founded until 1918, the year the first Bartola's were manufactured.

Could Wikipedia be wrong, or are they just missing some early history?

From the article:

Barton's first successful experiment in producing equipment to accompany silent films was a set of electrically operated bells that formed a musical scale. Mounted around the interior of the theater, these were operated by the pit drummer who was performing foley and various other sound effects for the picture. After seeing the highly enthusiastic reception of his invention, Barton began toying with the idea of a more elaborate mechanism employing additional percussion instruments and organ pipes.

In 1918, the Bartola Musical Instrument Company was formed...

So it appears that Barton made sound effects machines for theaters before expanding into the manufacture of full-scale organs. Maybe this was what was installed at the theater in Selma in 1914? Another contradictory thing is that, as you note, Selma, AL, is significantly further than an overnight sleeper ride from Chicago.

From the Wikipedia article, I find it interesting and bizarre that Marcel Dupré was chosen to play the inaugural concert of the monster Barton theater organ at the Chicago Stadium! He was a major figure in French early c20 classical organ music, and while he did tour America several times, he is most likely remembered for his slow and ponderous performances of mainly lesser known Bach pieces and those of French c19 composers (e.g. Widor and Guilmant), and for his own compositional output, which is so obscure and technically difficult to play that it is now hardly ever performed. The idea of him belting out a Sousa march on a theater organ is a hard one to imagine!

[William Kucharski]

Marcus to close theaters in Milwaukee, Franklin and Saukville, WI:

[Buck Wilson]

Regal Moline Stadium 14 in Moline Illinois and Regal O'Fallon Stadium 14 in O'Fallon MO are both closing this coming Friday as the bankruptcy proceedings continue. Both were previous Great Escapes theaters.

Other recent area Regal closures include our sister theater; Hollywood 14 in Topeka, Hollywood in Springfield MO, the previous Great Escape 16 in Omaha... B&B has been taking over several closed Regals in the area

[Martin McCaffery]

Question from you organ fans about the above. The 1914 Ad says Mr Hurlbert will "Play the Famous Bartola."
According to Wikipedia, "

Bartola focused almost exclusively on the Midwest market. Barton later recalled, "We decided to work only a limited territory so we could give prompt service to all our installations. [This territory included] Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio. No installation was more than an overnight sleeper ride from Chicago."^[1]...

and that the Bartola company was not founded until 1918, the year the first Bartola's were manufactured.

Could Wikipedia be wrong, or are they just missing some early history?

[Martin McCaffery]

Walton Theatre, Selma, AL
Selma Sun
July 14, 2023

Striplin Performing Arts Center, city's only movie theater closed after being declared unsafe

Dallas County lost its only movie theater Friday when the city of Selma ordered the building closed. The building inspector declared the Striplin Performing Arts Center, which houses the Walton Theater, unsafe and ordered it closed until further notice.
The Larry D. Striplin Performing Arts Center has been deemed unsafe by the City of Selma building inspector and is closed immediately until further notice, according to a statement issued Friday.

The Performing Arts Center includes Walton Theater, the city’s only movie theater.

The theater is closed and Walton director John Grayson said it should reopen when repairs can be made. He also said they are looking for ways to still show movies, possibly outdoors, until it can reopen.

Grayson said his wife noticed tiles fell from the ceiling in the girls bathroom and there was a problem with an area of roof “which is back behind the screen that has been damaged for about a month or so now.”

In a statement on Friday, Mayor James Perkins Jr. said portions of the ceiling are falling in.
“In addition to the age of the roof, the constant heavy rains are just taking their toll on our buildings and many of the roofs need to be replaced,“ Public Building Director Stephanie Menifee said in the statement.

We cannot allow another building to go unoccupied and therefore I am moving to declare the repairs an emergency. But I expect it will be expensive,” Perkins said.

Perkins said the condition of the Performing Arts Center is a sign of the city’s need to repair decaying infrastructure. “Every day it is becoming more and more expensive to maintain these old historic structures, and if we are to continue, we simply need more money, or we will need to set course in a new direction.”

Perkins will be presenting a budget to the Selma City Council Monday at 6:30 p.m. in the council chambers. Perkins said in a public hearing earlier this month that he will ask the City Council to hold a special election to increase the city's property tax to give the city more operating money.

Located at 1000 Selma Avenue, the Larry D. Striplin Jr. Performing Art Center was part of a restoration project which encompassed almost an entire city block and included the restoration of the Walton Theater, an abandoned movie theater that had been home to the children of Selma every Saturday afternoon during the 1940s and 1950s, according to the city’s web site.

Walton Theater's weekend movie was to be "Mission Impossible."

Grayson reassured moviegoers that they will work hard to reopen the theater, adding when it is closed “we lose traction. People don’t think about us. Each time we have to shut down it causes us to have to start all over again.”

The Walton was closed for some three weeks after the Jan. 12 tornado, but attendance jumped with the help of some good movies after it reopened, including a good run with the movie The Little Mermaid “which was a big hit for us and we got a little traction back and was happy to get back the attendance. But now we have to shut down because they condemned the building.”

Selma Times Journal
August 10, 1914

The_Selma_Times_Journal_1914_08_10_page_2.jpg

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The space paintings on the walls in the Ritz Theater Tooele, Utah. (See Post above)

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The Ritz Theater in Tooele, Utah, a single screen 500 seater, has apparently closed for good. Mike also had a drive in but sold that off about a year ago. I serviced the Ritz for a number of years and converted it to digital for him. Kind of sad to see it go because it has some really cool space related paintings inside from the early days of Project Mercury. Strangely, there is a huge military base in Tooele and one would have thought that may have helped... but it did not.

This article is from one of the local Salt Lake City newspapers today.

[Daniel Fredrickson]

Closing:

Harkins Metrocenter 12 (Phoenix, AZ)

MetrocenterHarkins.jpg?itok=4uyjGGxM.jpg

Sad to see this one go, it was a unique multilevel theater built on a former skating rink. Closed May 2023. The mall is also now closed and being razed.


Opening:

Bodo Cinemas (Boise, ID)

attachment-Photo-Mar-20-2023-8-55-35-PM.jpg?w=1200&h=0&zc=1&s=0&a=t&q=89.jpg

Previously operated by Regal as the Boise Downtown 9. Acquired, remodeled, and re-branded by CinemaWest. Aiming for the upscale dinner-movie audience. Opened sometime between Late March and Memorial Day 2023.

[Chris Haller]

Regal Henrietta 18 closes its doors tonight after it runs its last shows. This happens to be the theater that I've been working at part time for the last several months.

It was a purpose built 18 screen theater that opened its doors in 2000 at the height of Regal's and the multiplex's expansion. At one point it was the highest grossing theater in the region. Today it closes its doors due to years of neglect from its landlord and Regal themselves; no reclining seats, failing equipment, and a changing marketplace all worked against it after it reopened after the COVID-19 shut down. It was an easy target for closure as part of Cineworld's bankruptcy proceedings.

It also marks the end of Regal's exiting of the Rochester market - Regal Greece, Regal Culver Ridge, and Regal Henrietta have now all closed. Regal Greece will reopen as an Apple Cinemas at some point in the near future. I suspect neither Henrietta or Culver will become anything more than vacant real estate.

[Steve Guttag]

Showing good movies a long time was never a problem. The problem is, booking. Getting a "hit" is not a sure thing. If you pick your movies poorly or if there are no hits in release, that is when a single just has a ball and chain of rent, electricity and staff that can really hurt. When you have a theatre that, traditionally sat over 1000, you can't have a small staff because when you are busy, turning that room around will require a bit of staff. Furthermore, you have limited time to sell your wares between shows and, again, you are putting many hundreds of people (it was down to about 830 seats when they changed the seating spacing, went to high-backs...etc.). You can't just ramp up on the few days of being busy. You can certainly be seasonal but you can't just have 3 or 4 people and then call on a massive list when you are moving tons of people. It's a delicate balance.

While I was there (18 years or so), it would be a failure of a picture if we couldn't run it over a month. Now, the economics have change a bit over the decades. One was rewarded for running a picture a long time (a sliding scale that favored the theatre the longer you ran the picture). We could get months on a movie.

Now, my day was Saturday (all day) so it was more-busy that many other days of the week so I never saw it very sparse in there and definitely had sell outs (lots of them...for my entire time there). But, if we got a dud, it was quickly shuffled out. If a movie over-performed (The Last Emperor as an example, where it opened in at the Jenifer), we could pull it from another site.

You can talk with Mike about the struggles of booking requirements of being a single in a Montana town.