Cineplex Entertainment plans to spend $10 million to build an 11-screen multiplex that will anchor the Marine Gateway development as much as it consolidates the cinema giant?s first-run film dominance in Vancouver.
Last month Cineplex (TSX:CGX) became the first major tenant to announce that it would occupy part of PCI Developments Corp.?s mixed-use mega-project at the southeast corner of Marine Drive and Cambie Street.
Once complete in 2015, PCI?s 820,000-square-foot development on a two-hectare footprint is expected to have:
?461 housing units in two towers;
?a 12-storey, 230,000-square-foot office building;
?a major grocery store; and
?other amenities.
According to Vancouver-based Festival Cinemas owner Leonard Schein, Cineplex will likely draw customers from rival Empire Theatres? three-screen multiplex at Oakridge Centre as well as several of the 10 other multiplexes that Cineplex owns in Metro Vancouver.
Schein operates seven screens: five at Fifth Avenue Cinemas and one each at the Park and Ridge theatres.
Schein said those and the single-screen Rio and Dunbar theatres, which are privately owned, are the only others showing first-run films in the city of Vancouver.
The Rio Theatre?s recent successful application for a liquor licence has prompted speculation that it might stop showing films because selling alcohol at cinemas is prohibited in B.C.
?Cineplex doesn?t have a monopoly showing first-run films in B.C., but they just about do,? Schein said.
When Cineplex?s 11-screen multiplex is complete, in what is expected to be 2014, the company will operate 38 screens in Vancouver.
Cineplex?s bought U.S.-rival Cinemark Holdings Inc.?s (NYSE:CNK) lone Vancouver property, the 12-screen Cinemark Tinseltown, in November 2010. Schein said he?s surprised Canada?s Competition Bureau allowed the transaction because Tinseltown is close to Cineplex?s nine-screen Scotiabank Theatre downtown.
Back in 2005, when Cineplex spent $500 million to buy rival theatre chain Famous Players from Viacom Inc., the bureau required Cineplex to sell many of its properties and abstain from acquiring new ones for at least five years.
Cineplex then sold to Empire Theatres:
?Granville 7 (which no longer shows first-run films);
?Oakridge Cinemas;
?North Vancouver?s Esplanade 6 Cinemas; and
?Surrey?s Studio 12 Guildford.
The only Metro Vancouver multiplex that Cineplex closed since it built Scotiabank Theatres in 2005 has been the Richmond Centre 6 Cinemas.
Cineplex communications director Kyle Moffatt told Business in Vancouver that Centre 6 was closed because its lease ran out and the mall wanted to redevelop.
?The closure had nothing to do with box office sales.?
He added that business is strong at all of Cineplex?s B.C. properties.
Cineplex temporarily closed five of its 20 screens at Coquitlam?s Silver City. Moffatt said the screens are being upgraded to VIP status and will reopen in time for the Christmas season.
Cineplex?s strategy to build a cinema multiplex in a major new development linked with SkyTrain is part of a trend.
Calgary-based Landmark Cinemas announced last year that it would build a 10-screen cinema complex in the Degelder Group?s Plaza 88 project on the SkyTrain line in New Westminster.
That $250 million project is expected to eventually include four residential towers with a total of 800 condominiums built across from New Westminster Quay on a 2.1-hectare site at 8th Street and Columbia Street.
Landmark president Brian McIntosh told BIV that his 1,800-seat stadium-style cinema complex will be open by March 2012.
Cineplex?s slightly larger 48,000-square-foot Marine Gateway will be able to seat 1,940 people in its 11 auditoriums when it opens in 2014.
Seven of the cinemas will be traditional movie screening rooms; the other four will offer such added features as extra leg room and high-backed chairs and allow customers to reserve seats and order from menus. One of the four will have a significantly larger screen and a high-end surround-sound system.
McIntosh said patrons at Landmark?s cinemas won?t be able to order food or drinks to their seats, but the theatres will be outfitted with extra leg room and larger seats, and customers will be able to reserve seats. ?
