In Focus

March 2006

This article reprinted by permission of the
National Association of Theatre Owners, © 2006.
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 – evenlive 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 thebusiness,” 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.”   

This article reprinted by permission of the National Association of Theatre Owners, © 2006.

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