Movies to return to city's Cineplex
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By Brent Curtis Staff Writer - Published: November 23, 2009
Coming soon to the Movieplex 9 in Rutland: movies.
The theater, which has been closed for more than a month, is scheduled to reopen on Dec. 18 with a new look and new ownership.
Last week, Flagship Cinemas Inc., based in Cambridge, Mass., signed a contract to lease the theater from Centro-Heritage, the company that owns the Rutland Shopping Plaza.
Flagship Cinemas president John Crowley declined during a phone interview to talk about the length of the lease or its value. But Crowley, whose company runs more than a dozen theaters around New England, said his company was planning to stay in Rutland for the long haul.
"We're going to be there for awhile," he said. "We're sensitive to the communities we're in. We're no fly-by-night company."
To prove it, he said his company is making a sizable investment in the aging theater.
While the interior will be a "work in progress" when the theater reopens next month, Crowley said it won't be long before just about every element of the nine-screen cinema is overhauled and upgraded.
New seats, a new concession booth, new carpets, drapes, speakers and projection booths will be installed and a special 3-D digital projection system costing $100,000 will be installed on one screen to provide viewers the most advanced viewing experience around.
"It's going to be a whole new theater," Crowley said.
The new 3-D projector will be used primarily to screen movies with robust visuals that are accessible to a wide audience. Some of the movies that Crowley anticipated for the 3-D screen are Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," arriving in February; "Shrek Forever After," due in May; "Toy Story 3," due in June; and "Yogi Bear."
"It's the brand-new technology," Crowley said of the 3-D projector. "Certainly less than 10 to 15 percent of theaters in the country have it."
The Movieplex has been empty since its former owners, Cinema North, announced last month that they were closing the Rutland theater along with their other movie theaters in Massachusetts and New York.
Since that time, several companies have approached Heritage-Realty about taking over operations. But in the end, Crowley said, it was Heritage-Realty who contacted him soon after the theater closed and asked if he was interested in a contract.
"We've been looking at the market up there for the last couple of years," he said. "We made inquiries in the past. When it closed, things came together."
Downtown Rutland Partnership executive director Michael Coppinger said he was glad not only that things came together to reopen the theater, but that they did so in a timely fashion.
"With the Christmas and holidays coming, it's a big season for the movie industry with a lot of lost business if that building is closed," he said. "I knew it wouldn't stay dark for long. It's good news for the whole area."
brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com
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