Multi
Tasking
Multi
Plexes
Exhibitors Are Growing
Increasingly Creative When It Comes To How They Use Their
Auditoria
by Anne Gilbert
In the
pre-matinee morning, a multiplex
stands quiet and alone. In a few hours it will
be crawling with eager moviegoers and smelling of popcorn,
but in these off-peak hours its auditoria have little to
offer.
Or do they?
Cinema owners have long sought ways to maximize the profitability
of their facilities, and increasingly are
looking for ways to make use of their amenities in so-called “dark” periods.
Moving beyond traditional uses like one-time corporate and
party rentals, many modern multis now serve as part-time
cathedrals and classrooms, allowing for additional revenue
streams without sacrificing screenings during what are typically
a cinema’s most lucrative hours.
THEATRE
WORSHIP
It is increasingly common for
new churches – or existing
churches expanding to a new location – to rent temporary
space while building a congregation and raising funds to
build or purchase a permanent home. Traditional choices have
run to local community centers, school auditoria or meeting
spaces in local hotels.
Mark Batterson, lead pastor at
National Community Church (NCC) in Washington, D.C., says
his church
began looking
for locations to rent with this traditional mindset. It landed
at the AMC Union Station 9-plex in the Capitol Hill neighborhood
and, within months, opted to make the arrangement permanent. “We
realized that we could never build a church that had all
of these amenities; we realized we loved meeting at a movie
theatre.”
Eight years later, the church
is working towards a new goal: “Our
vision is to meet at movie theatres at metro stops throughout
the D.C. area,” says Batterson. “I would love
to see a thousand churches meeting in movie theatres across
the country.” NCC is “branded” as theaterchurch.com,
and currently meets at two cinema sites: The original at
the AMC Union Station and the Regal Ballston Common 12-plex
in Arlington, Va. Plans call for a third site in northwest
D.C. by fall of 2006.
Three-year-old National CineMedia
(NCM), a marketing venture operated jointly by the Regal,
AMC and Cinemark chains, runs
a subdivision called CineMeetings, dedicated to subleasing
cinema auditoria for alternative uses. Mike Schonberger,
NCM’s vice president for sales and marketing, estimates
that his firm already facilitates 90 to 100 congregations,
with many more in various stages of negotiations. “We’ve
seen anywhere from a 40- to 50-percent growth rate each year,
and I would say that’s conservative.”
The idea of conducting church
services in a cinema is not entirely new; the first church
to do so seems to be the Chicago-based
Willow Creek Community Church, which began in a movie theatre
nearly three decades ago. This was the exception, however,
and the current wave of cinemas housing churches largely
began around inception of theaterchurch.com, with a marked
increase in interested churches triggering around 2002, according
to NCM officials.
“A big percentage of the
time a theatre is an asset that’s
not utilized to its fullest potential,” says NCM’s
Schonberger, and an annualized agreement with a church that
fills a few auditoria every Sunday morning is an undeniable
gain.
“It’s the use of this fairly large facility during ‘dark
times,’” concurs Jeremy Devine, vice president
of marketing for Rave Motion Pictures. Rave has some six
churches meeting in its theatres and is looking to solicit
more. “We’re not showing films, but we’ve
got this beautiful, big building … [so we] are trying
to use the facility for other purposes to increase our revenue.”
Further, points out Herman Stone,
president and CEO of Consolidated Theatres, churches “put a lot of folks through your
front doors who maybe wouldn’t walk through your front
doors otherwise.” Consolidated sites currently host
about eight services, and Stone estimates 50 to 60 churches
of various denominations once called a Consolidated plex
home.
Stone, for one, says his circuit’s willingness to house
congregations is not income-driven: “Communities have
needs and wants, and when you are in the theatre business,
this is an excellent opportunity to go out there and do something
that will make a difference.”
PLUSSES
& MINUSES
Churches that opt to hold services in cinemas tend to cite
a lengthy list of reasons the arrangement is advantageous,
among them comfortable seating, superior acoustical design,
large capacities and the high-end technology with which an
auditorium is typically equipped.
“We have an incredible facility,
way better than we could ever afford, but it costs a fraction
of what it would to
go to a much lower-grade area or a smaller space,” explains
Mark Walker, campus pastor for Church of the Highlands in
Montgomery, Ala. A new branch of an existing church based
in Birmingham, Walker’s congregation meets at the Rave
Festival Plaza 16-plex.
| “Our philosophy is really about building ministries
in people, as opposed to monstrosities of buildings,” says
church official Darin Brown. “I think that’s
the way the winds are blowing for a lot of churches.
People ask us occasionally when we’re going to
move, but why would we? It’s such a great deal
for us.” |
The quest for a central location
is one shared by exhibitors and clergy alike. “We like being in the middle of the
marketplace,” comments NCC’s Batterson. He welcomes
the accessibility cinemas offer, their ample parking and
proximity to all forms of public transportation.
Walker concurs: “A high-visibility zone makes it easier,
if you are inviting someone to church or sending out a marketing
piece, because people already know where it is.”
Darin Brown is outreach pastor
for Journey’s Crossing,
which launched in 2001 at the Loews Rio 18-plex in Gaithersburg,
Md. “We were a brand-new church,” he says, “so
we were specifically targeting a location that was a ‘destination
location,’ a place people were familiar with and would
say, ‘I know where that is. I go there all the time.’
“Our experience has been
that it increased attendance. We invited people via direct
mail, and we had 500 people come
to our first service, which is phenomenal.” Journey’s
Crossing subsequently established a second Maryland site
in Silver Springs’ Consolidated Majestic 20-plex.
Churches meeting in cinemas tend
to make the most of their attributes. The screen is useful
for projecting images during
the sermon or making congregation announcements. Different-sized
auditoria allow a church room to expand with a growing congregation,
or to house nursery- and grade-school-aged congregants in
separate rooms of appropriate size.
NCC shows a “trailer” for the sermon at the start
of the Sunday program. “We have fun with the movie
metaphor,” Batterson explains. “On a lot of our
marketing, we will put ‘Now meeting at a theatre near
you’; we do an annual series called ‘God at the
Box Office’; we give out our welcome material to guests
in a popcorn box.”
Church officials acknowledge
the arrangement does carry some drawbacks. “Sometimes theatres are hesitant to sign
longer-term leases with us, just because it’s so new
that they aren’t sure what to think and don’t
want to commit upfront to an extended time,” acknowledges
Journey’s Crossing’s Brown.
Others cite the labor-intensive
process of setting up and breaking down a church each week,
which often involves a
number of auditoria and can include sound, lighting and projection
equipment, portable stages, signage, information booths,
and nursery and children’s schools. Church of the Highlands’ Walker
also notes the permanent lighting in typical cinema auditoria
is not bright enough for audiences to read or write, and
must therefore be supplemented.
Brown also notes the pressure
to be out of the plex by a pre-arranged time can occasionally
rush churchgoers through
visiting and discussion after services, but points out that
the theatres’ close proximity to numerous restaurants
allows members to segue easily from church to lunch.
Consolidated’s Stone points out another small logistical
complication: Cinema cleaning services usually have to make
sure they’re done vacuuming and mopping before parishioners
arrive early Sunday morning – a sometimes tricky prospect
given that Saturday nights tend to a cinema’s busiest
(and messiest).
On the upside, part of the appeal
of holding services inside a cinema is “people who maybe didn’t feel comfortable
walking into a church building could still come to church,” notes
Batterson. “We really feel like a theatre is a great
non-threatening environment.”
Many worshipers meeting in movie
theatres are already somewhat non-traditional and informal
in style, and both NCC and Church
of the Highlands are specifically targeted to younger congregants;
NCC estimates about 70 percent of its membership to be singles
in their 20s.
Vineyard Church of Ithaca cites
on their website a similar philosophy of a “relaxed, safe and contemporary” setting
that is well-matched to its meeting spot at the Regal Pyramid
Mall 10-ples in Ithaca, N.Y.
CHURCHES
OF THE FUTURE
For Church of the Highlands, the hope is to
make the Rave plex a temporary home, if a long-term one.
Its model is the
parent church in Birmingham, which has been meeting at a
school for five years. “What it’s allowed us
to do is to save a lot of money and be able to pay cash on
a plot of land,” Walker comments. “It’s
going to be 6-and-a-half years from when the church started
until they move into a building, but on the other hand, we’ve
saved a lot of money and haven’t had to use financing.
When I say temporary, we are aiming to stay [at the cinema]
longer than most people might think.”
Other congregations, however, have no plans
to leave their multiplex homes. National Community Church’s long-range
goals are to expand into additional sites, not build structures.
Mill Creek Community Church of Buford, Ga., meets at the
Regal Mall of Georgia 20-plex and has no current plans to
build. Instead of focusing attention on mortgage payments, “we
have decided to invest all our efforts and resources into
the people of our community,” says the church’s
literature.
“Our philosophy is really about building
ministries in people, as opposed to monstrosities of buildings,” says Journey’s
Crossing’s Brown. “I think that’s the way
the winds are blowing for a lot of churches. People ask us
occasionally when we’re going to move, but why would
we? It’s such a great deal for us.”
One church simply decided to buy its own cinema – lock,
stock and concession counter. Edgewater United Methodist
Church in Port Charlotte, Fla., outgrew its more traditional
house of worship, and sold the facility in 2001. Its services
are now held in what was a shuttered Regal 8-plex, which
provides more space, greater acreage and higher traffic.
Though the multi needed renovation to function as a church
full-time, Edgewater worshipers find the same benefits – a
non-threatening atmosphere and a strategic location – in
its new home as churches leasing space in active multis enjoy
in theirs.
SECULAR
SECTOR
More traditional uses for movie theatres during
non-operational or off-peak hours are corporate and private
rentals. NCM’s
CineMeetings division specializes in renting space to companies
looking to engineer presentation-heavy meetings.
CineMeetings offers such options as catering,
box lunches, audio-video equipment and even support staffing.
Particularly
useful to many parties is NCM’s “little d” digital-projection
network. Used daily for sound-and-motion “advertainment” preshows,
the system’s little-d equipment allows for presentations – even
live presentations – to be projected simultaneously
onto multiple cinema screens across the United States.
“The theatre option is especially great
for companies that have a large, diverse sales force across
the country and
need to communicate with them simultaneously,” explains
Amy Jane Finnerty, NCM’s director of PR and communications.
CineMeetings also organizes what it calls “roadshow
events” that allow corporate trainers to travel to
meetings at sites across the country to bring information
to locations on a successive basis.
CineMeetings clients, says Schonberger, have
seen their attendance rates skyrocket when employee and franchisee
meetings occur
at convenient locations across the country – instead
of one locale that requires hefty travel. (This is especially
true, he notes, when the corporate message is bundled with
a feature film presentation.)
“Obviously, as part of our main objective,
we do not want to interrupt the main movie business,” says Schonberger, “but
we really focus on really solving problems for our customers,
not just renting them space. We really get engaged in what
the objectives are for their meetings.”
Exhibitors considerably smaller than NCM have
also done well renting out auditoria to corporate clients.
Five years ago, when it was a new company with a small-but-expanding
work force, the Los Gatos, Calif.-based online DVD-rental
company Netflix had no meeting space large enough to accommodate
its employees for quarterly meetings and all-company seminars.
It therefore selected a meeting spot that Netflix officials
felt was both convenient and thematically appropriate: Camera
Cinemas’ Los Gatos twin, situated less than a mile
away.
“It was the right venue. It’s a small, intimate space,
and it’s a movie theatre. We rent movies, that’s
our business, so it all fit,” explains Netflix director
of corporate communications Steve Swasey. “Some of
it also has to do with the hometown appeal.”
Since the cinema is not open for business
on weekday mornings, Netflix employees had full use of the
lobby and foyer for
a catered lunch the company had brought in. Afterwards, an
auditorium housed the earnings announcements and department
updates, and the company frequently made use of the screen
for its entertainment. “In recent quarters, the entertainment
has been in-house-produced movies that have been about the
business,” says Swasey.
“Part of our package deal was unlimited
popcorn and soda for their attendees,” notes Camera Cinemas business manager
Bonita Choly. “They brought in all of their own A/V
equipment and never had any technical demands of us.”
Earlier this year, Netflix moved into a new
corporate campus with large, custom-built meeting spaces,
so its long-term
arrangement with the twin is now a thing of the past. “We
are going to miss meeting there,” comments Swasey. “It’s
the allure of the theatre. We do things that are themed to
movies, so what better place for a company meeting than a
moviehouse? It makes the meeting part of the theatregoing
experience.”
MOVIEHOUSE TO
SCHOOLHOUSE
It is not uncommon on college campuses
for large lecture halls to double as de facto on-campus
cinemas. At the University
of Minnesota, however, the shift in function went in the
opposite direction. The West Bank Auditorium, home in the
evenings to the Bijou film series, now serves as a classroom
use during daytime hours.
The shared facility, involving co-operation
between the university’s
student union and classroom management bodies, allows the
bodies to share the cost of building maintenance and technological
upgrades, resulting in better amenities for both its incarnations.
A more unorthodox arrangement is also
a surprisingly well-functioning one. Last fall, when hurricane
Katrina displaced much of
the city of New Orleans, Louisiana State University’s
medical school recommenced classes one month later in Baton
Rouge. The school held courses at spots around the city,
with the nursing students meeting for class at a local multiplex,
according to an Associated Press article from October 2005.
The cinema donated space to Katrina
refugees on the condition that the classes cleared out
before 11 a.m., when the plex
opened for commercial use. Though the auditoria lacked certain
amenities of ordinary lecture halls, such as built-in writing
desks, the stadium-style seating and large screens proved
ideal for PowerPoint lectures.
CineMeetings also continues to actively
explore the potential of the multiplex-classroom. In place
for nearly three years
is a program that allows physicians to learn about new techniques
and treatments by attending panel discussions transmitted
into cinema auditoria on Saturday mornings. Presentations
are typically followed by an interactive question-and-answer
period, allowing participants to phone in questions to the
panel from NCM cinema sites around the nation. CineMeetings
is currently exploring other fields that periodically require
constituents to have additional training or certification.
There is “no question,” says RCM’s Schonberger,
that the use of multiplexes to alleviate classroom overcrowding
can only continue to grow. “Our challenge is flexibility
with times, because depending on how late classes would go,
they may run into our core business. But that’s a definite
target audience for us. And obviously, the economics are
going to work better for the university to use a theatre
versus building a brick-and-mortar auditorium.” 
