Sunday, February 12, 2012

I learned a lot about the movie theatre business today. I attended the Annual General Meeting of the Friends of the Historic Patricia Theatre Society. I’m not a member but I brought home an application form and will join. The AGM went very quickly and the executive positions and board were all elected by acclamation.

There are three groups involved with running the theatre – one of the local banks owns the building and another corporation (“the owners”) has an agreement to purchase the building. The Society has a relationship with the corporation to help preserve the heritage building. Because the relationships between the three are complicated, it means sorting out the funding issue is also complicated.

The main purpose of the meeting was to see what the Society could do to help the owners with the $90,000 they need to convert the theatre from 35mm to digital. The conversion is not unexpected, but the timeline was recently moved up by a couple of years.

If the theatre doesn’t convert by the summer they won’t be able to show films because the distributors are converting to digital only. If the theatre can’t show films, the owners won’t be able to put any other kind of business in its place because the bylaws state that a new business has to have dedicated parking. The theatre is in the historic Townsite (think 1912-era) and there is no parking available.

If the owners sell (which they would be forced to do if the theatre closes) the building would likely be demolished. There was some talk about an architect that would love to turn the building into apartments. I can’t see how that would work, but apparently he was very enthusiastic.

There were a lot of ideas tossed about today and the new board will take a look at them and decide how to proceed. Time is of the essence though as the longer it takes to put the order in for the new equipment, the longer the wait will be to have the technicians come to install it.

We use the theatre a lot and I would certainly miss it. I’ll wait to see the plan the board comes up with and volunteer to help where I can.