New theater to open next year
By Susan Pugh on Jul. 23, 2008
From staff reports
Movie theaters in Lynchburg are slated to get a new competitor next year, as Regal Entertainment opens the first new theater here in 17 years.
Regal will operate the 56,000- square-foot movieplex in River Ridge mall, in the location of the Value City store that closed last month.
The 14 screens will raise the region’s screen count to 32. It also will add another 2,400 seats.
The new theater will have digital surround sound and new concessions, and will be the first in the area with stadium seating.
An official with Regal said he’s confident the market has enough demand to support the theater.
But will there be room for other new theaters as well?
The movie theater business can be extremely competitive - if two theaters locate within three miles of each other, they can’t both get the same movie at the same time. Sometimes, the potential for competition keeps a theater out.
The development of the Regal theater has put on hold plans to secure a theater for the Lakeside Center development planned by English Construction.The project came about because of the efforts of the mall’s parent company, CBL & Associates Properties, and Regal Entertainment Group. Both Tennessee-headquartered companies were looking at bringing a better theater to Lynchburg.
“That’s really what the residents and the shoppers have been asking for,” said Katie Reinsmidt, corporate communications director for CBL.
She said the company learned that some people in the Lynchburg area were driving an hour to theaters in Roanoke and Charlottesville.
Lynchburg currently has 22 big screens - 10 at the discount Cinemark theater in Candler’s Station, four at the Carmike in River Ridge mall, and eight at Carmike’s Plaza location.
The Carmike at the Plaza was the last one to open, in 1991. The Cinemark theater in Candler’s Station opened the year before.
The Carmike theater in the mall will close once the Regal theater opens next year. James Dolan, mall manager, said it will be converted to retail space.
Browning said he’s certain the Regal theater - with new concessions, digital surround sound, and plush rocking seats - will do well in the market.
“Theaters bring restaurants, and restaurants bring people,” Booth said. “It creates synergy around the shopping environment.”
Booth said at one point he was in discussions with Regal to run a theater in Lakeside Center. His discussions went further with another company, though.
“We’re still pursuing it. We may not be as successful as we previously thought, but we are very much pursuing it and still think it’s a possibility,” he said.
The final decision about whether Lakeside will get a theater will be determined by the success of the Regal at the mall, Booth said.
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