I’ve posted this same comment on the Varsity Theater discussion, but I have to admit that it was the Central Street location that first came to my mind when I started thinking about mounting this sort of a renovation project…
I just returned from Portland Oregon, where over the last 15 years they’ve seen about 12-15 of these old theater’s reclaimed for use as brew-pub/restaurants, where you can eat while you watch a film on the big screen. It’s a terrific use of the space, an asset to the community, and obviously they’re doing well as businesses. They typically take out all the old seats and replace them with scattered sofas and coffee tables, or they remove every other row of the theater seating and put in long tables, so that eating is quite comfortable. They serve good but simple fare, along the lines of high-end pizza or burgers, along with wine and beer (often micro-brewed, though not on-site). At non-peak times they use the space for classics, art film series, midnight shows, birthday parties, kids movies and so on.
Any interest is seeing this sort of development? If so, contact me.
To SR and others –
I just returned from Portland Oregon, where over the last 15 years they’ve seen about 12-15 of these old theater’s reclaimed for use as brew-pub/restaurants, where you can eat while you watch a film on the big screen. It’s a terrific use of the space, an asset to the community, and obviously they’re doing well as businesses. They typically take out all the old seats and replace them with scattered sofas and coffee tables, or they remove every other row of the theater seating and put in long tables, so that eating is quite comfortable. They serve good but simple fare, along the lines of high-end pizza or burgers, along with wine and beer (often micro-brewed, though not on-site). At non-peak times they use the space for classics, art film series, midnight shows, birthday parties, kids movies and so on.
Any interest is seeing this sort of development? If so, contact me.
I’ve posted this same comment on the Varsity Theater discussion, but I have to admit that it was the Central Street location that first came to my mind when I started thinking about mounting this sort of a renovation project…
I just returned from Portland Oregon, where over the last 15 years they’ve seen about 12-15 of these old theater’s reclaimed for use as brew-pub/restaurants, where you can eat while you watch a film on the big screen. It’s a terrific use of the space, an asset to the community, and obviously they’re doing well as businesses. They typically take out all the old seats and replace them with scattered sofas and coffee tables, or they remove every other row of the theater seating and put in long tables, so that eating is quite comfortable. They serve good but simple fare, along the lines of high-end pizza or burgers, along with wine and beer (often micro-brewed, though not on-site). At non-peak times they use the space for classics, art film series, midnight shows, birthday parties, kids movies and so on.
Any interest is seeing this sort of development? If so, contact me.
To SR and others –
I just returned from Portland Oregon, where over the last 15 years they’ve seen about 12-15 of these old theater’s reclaimed for use as brew-pub/restaurants, where you can eat while you watch a film on the big screen. It’s a terrific use of the space, an asset to the community, and obviously they’re doing well as businesses. They typically take out all the old seats and replace them with scattered sofas and coffee tables, or they remove every other row of the theater seating and put in long tables, so that eating is quite comfortable. They serve good but simple fare, along the lines of high-end pizza or burgers, along with wine and beer (often micro-brewed, though not on-site). At non-peak times they use the space for classics, art film series, midnight shows, birthday parties, kids movies and so on.
Any interest is seeing this sort of development? If so, contact me.