Salt Lake area moviegoers will have more theaters to choose from next month when local chain Westates Theaters Inc. reopens nine screens that were shut down recently by the Loews Cineplex national theater chain.
The six screens at Holladay Centre Cinemas, 1945 E. Murray-Holladay Road, are scheduled to reopen April 20, and the three screens of the Trolley North theaters at 1000 N. 500 East are set for an April 6 reopening, said Tony J. Rudman, vice president and corporate counsel for Westates, a family-owned business launched by his father and company president, also named Tony Rudman, when he bought the Davis Drive-in Theater in 1958.
Rudman said the Holladay complex has nearly 1,500 seats in the six theaters, including one with 400. He noted that it was a "flagship" theater when it opened in 1987 and had been doing good business before it was closed by Loews, which has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Trolley North has been "gutted" and is being completely remodeled except for the large Massey rocker seats in the main theater, which Rudman said are so expensive they can't be replaced today. Digital sound, new projectors and other upgrades will be in place when that complex reopens, he said.
The company also expects to get the Trolley Corners theaters at 515 S. 700 East by September, when the lease expires on that complex, as well as the Midvalley theaters at 5700 S. Redwood Road. Loews "affirmed" its leases on Broadway, Trolley Corners and Midvalley when it took out bankruptcy but "rejected" all of its other leases at Trolley North, South Towne Center, Holladay Center and University Mall in Orem.
Rudman said the nine screens to be reopened will show first-run movies but at ticket prices — $6 for adults, $4 for children — that are more in keeping with "neighborhood" theaters than the prices charged by the larger chains.
"There's always been a good, loyal movie-going base in Salt Lake, and there's a place for the kind of clean, reasonably priced theaters we operate," Rudman said.
He agrees with a recent Deseret News feature article on movie theaters in which the view was expressed that theaters can actually make more money charging a bit less for tickets and concession food.
"That's been our philosophy all along," he said. "It's always concerned us that people come in and build these huge megaplexes for $30 million to $40 million and try to drive independents like us out of business."
But that marketing plan seems to have backfired on the big chains. "We do it differently," Rudman said. "We are very cautious about expenses, we watch everything carefully, we're financially strong and we believe the regional theater chain will continue to be a strong business. We don't have investment bankers running our theaters; we run them."
Rudman said he believes that the big chains got caught in a vicious circle of expanding and taking on more debt. "The more you build, the more overhead you have, and the more revenue you must generate. And the movies are expensive. On the blockbusters, you have to pay as much as 70 percent of revenues to the distributors, at least for the first few weeks."
But Westates is not just a neighborhood "mom 'n' pop" operation. It has a total of 99 screens in operation or under construction in Salt Lake City, Tooele, Logan, St. George and Cedar City, as well as Mesquite and Elko, Nev., and Montpelier, Idaho.
The company also operates its own film booking agency, which has some 200 theater accounts, including its own.
The national chains have placed some of the blame for their financial problems on Hollywood, saying that the film industry simply doesn't produce enough good movies that people want to see. Rudman doesn't agree.
"I'm optimistic about the upcoming summer releases," he said. "The Christmas season and even January and February were particularly good months for us, and I'm encouraged by the number of family films coming out. If we have the best theaters in each (market) zone in which we operate, we should get our share of business."
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