Projecting the Future

By Jorge Casuso
Lookout Staff

Feb. 11 -- In 1986, shortly after he was charged with helping to pump life back into Third Street, City official Jeff Mathieu visited the beleaguered outdoor mall to catch an evening screening of "Year of the Dragon."

Mathieu entered the large theater, sat down and looked around. "My wife and I were the only people there," Mathieu recalled. "I knew this would be a challenge."

Flash forward. It is Christmas Eve 2002 and Mathieu, his wife and two sons attend a 9:30 screening of "Maid in Manhattan" at a theater on the Third Street Promenade. Although it is not a traditional movie-going night, the theater is three quarters full.

"It was a far cry from 1986," said Mathieu, who heads the City's department of Economic Development, which is charged with overseeing the Downtown.

A dozen years after serving as a key catalyst in turning the moribund row of Third Street storefronts into a thriving shopping and entertainment strip, the Mann, Loews and AMC theaters remain a major "generator use," drawing many of the 10 million annual visitors to the Promenade. (The older Monica Theater on Second Street draws an older loyal art film audience that has helped it survive major trends in the screening business.)

"On a peak Friday or Saturday night with a lot of good movies out, you could have a couple of thousand people," said Robert O. York, a partner in The Fransen Co. and a consultant for the Bayside District Corp. "It's part of putting the Downtown on the map of places to go, things to do."

But in a market flooded with state-of-the-art theaters that feature a wide choice of movies, plush seats and stadium seating, the Promenade's silver screens could be losing their luster. Pacific Theaters, for example, recently paid a record price for the 14-screen cinema at the Grove, a new venue next to the Farmers Market on Fairfax that poses stiff competition to
the Promenade theaters.

So do the 17 theaters featuring stadium seating, state-of-the-art projection and Dolby Digital Surround-EX sound at the 106,000-square-foot Bridge off of the 405 freeway, where reserved tickets on weekend nights go for $14.

Nearby, Culver City is pumping money into a new theater complex, and Century City boasts the AMC 14-plex, the most heavily attended theater in Los Angeles.

"The bar has certainly been raised in the past few years," York said. "They (the Promenade theaters) are strong theaters, but they're losing their competitive edge.

"We're very aware and sensitive to the trends and recognize that as long as extremely popular movies are put out, Santa Monica will continue to do well," said Mark Richter, who oversees the Bayside for the City's Department of Economic Development. "But in the long term, they will have to be able to compete."

Worried that Promenade theaters may be losing their competitive edge, City officials are starting to plan for the future. Any policy decisions, however, would need the blessing of the City Council and the cooperation of the theater operators -­ who have not yet been appraised during the "very preliminary" planning stage -­ before any proposals take physical shape.

"We've been desiring for some time to look at creative ways to revisit and rethink the manner in which we provide a theater product," Mathieu said. "We're interested in ways we can be more responsive to the marketplace. At this point, we¹re trying to be creative. We always want to be ahead of the curve and not be reactive."

"On a very preliminary basis, we are looking at how to accommodate or foster theater development Downtown," Richter said shortly after attending a meeting on the issue.

City officials are looking at a number of options they hope to eventually bring to the City Council. They include everything from expanding the current theaters to relocating them from the Promenade to surrounding streets to adding theaters to the new public parking structures that will be built under an ambitious $92.5 million Downtown parking plan.

Expanding the current theaters is unlikely because the sites lack the space needed to expand and add stadium seating, officials and consultants contend. The size of the three current theaters (which range from about 22,000 to 45,000 square feet) falls far short of the 60,000 to 100,000 square feet boasted by their state-of-the-art competitors, York said.

"Most of the theaters are multi-level, which precludes you from going to stadium seating, and for a lot of people, that's important," York said. "Realistically, you¹re probably looking at relocating them. It's hard to fit the footprints on the Promenade."

"It's not only the choice of seats, but the choice of six, seven, eight movies," said Jill Bensley, a consultant whose company, Research Associates, follows movie theater trends. "Even four-screen plexes or six screens can be obsolete."

The more likely scenario -­ which would require a partnership between developers and operators -­ would be to relocate the theaters off the Promenade while retaining direct links to the main shopping and dining strip.

"We don¹t want to abandon or leave the Promenade," Mathieu said. "There has to be an extension of passageways" to Third Street.