Sadly, the Villa Theater in Salt Lake City, announced this week that they have been sold and will close next Tuesday. The building opened in 1949, seats 1300, and is truly the last of the old style theatres left in the Salt Lake area. Just last summer this theatre was listed in a USA Today article about the best 10 old style theatres left in the US. Reportedly the new owners of the property (as of yet not publicly revealed) have no plans to operate a theatre and the building could likely be demolished.
One success is in Jersey City , NJ where they have almost restored a old Loews Theatre, all through charitable work. It's impressive and a beautiful building. My girlfriend, who is an Artist worked on it some. They have at least 3 movies per month, usually with one theme, like Hitchcock for instance. But this, sadly, is an exception.
Bummer about the Salt Lake one. We've got some good news here in NW Ohio, though, with the Maumee Theater planned for renovation. Here's a clipping from The Blade a little while back: "In addition, council told its building and lands committee to search for a consultant to evaluate the condition of the Maumee Theater in preparation for its renovations. The city bought the theater at Anthony Wayne Trail and Conant Street this month for $300,000 and is scheduled to get the title tomorrow. "It shows a respect for history and preservation of our past, as well as looking to the future," Mayor Tim Wagener said after the meeting. "I think it's a nice mix there." The theater, built in the Art Moderne style and listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1998, was an entertainment venue from the time it was built in 1946 until it closed in 1996."
I used to live down the block from there. I saw a few movies there as a kid. It's good to see that it's back open. I always thought that such a lovely building shouldn't be left empty and rotting. Thanks for the link too. It brought back memories.
It's always been a dream of mine to own an old movie house and screen movies the real old-fashioned way: short film or two, cartoon, and a feature. Alas, looks like SLC is not the place for me to fulfill that dream. Very sad. What those volunteers have been able to do with the Lowes Jersey is astonishing. The lobby is all but done and they're hosting movie and concert events again using only the orchestra section. The balcony still needs a ton of work, though. For people in the JC area who are interested, you can show up there any Saturday and they have things for skilled and unskilled volunteers to do. It's right in Journal Square.
Sad Over the summer, I went to the National Order of the Arrow Conference (NOAC) which was held at the University of Indiana in the lovely hamlet of Bloomington. On their "main street" (Kirkwood Drive), there was an old theater that was boarded up. On the marquee some one had spray painted "Now showing: Nothing! Thanks AMC!" (it didn't say AMC, and I can't remember the name of the buyer, but AMC's the only big theater chain I can think of right now). Naturally, I was curious about what happened, so I found a student and asked him about it. He told me that the big theater in town had bought the old University Theater that let students in for what used to be cheap at twice the price. Free popcorn if you brought the bag, free drinks if you brought the cup (but only if you were a student @ IU). In the same week, that the big chain theater bought the University Theater, it closed it with no plans to reopen and increased their prices by $1.50. Capitalism is a great thing, isn't it? Vive le AFC! OPArsenal