Dinner and a movie

Imagine walking from home or the office to a restaurant for dinner, then walking to the theater to catch a movie. Those who work or live downtown have.

Imagine watching those TigerVision “black out” games on a big screen with a crowd larger than the one that fits in your living room. LSU fans who’ve fumbled with hooking up a cable box to their TV minutes before kickoff certainly have.

Andres Duany imagined it, too. City officials hired the famed architect and urban planner a decade ago as a consultant on remaking downtown through Plan Baton Rouge. Back then Duany held up a commercial movie theater as a tent pole and benchmark for the success of downtown revitalization. Plan Baton Rouge took Duany’s conviction to heart and penciled in the surface parking lot at the corner of Third Street and Laurel for a commercial cinema.

Teddy Solomon’s Gulf States Theaters considered planting a theater downtown, but backed out. Magic Johnson’s company considered it as well, but the NBA legend, who now invests in inner cities, also pump-faked in the end.

It has been years since downtown attracted the gaze of an independent theater or a chain like Landmark that operates the indie-friendly Canal Place Cinema in downtown New Orleans.

“The only thing that would perhaps work in downtown Baton Rouge would be a first-class art house theater with four to six screens,” says Solomon’s son, George, who operates 18 theaters across the southeast. “And I don’t even know if that would be supported. With current construction costs you’re talking $1 million per screen.”

In his late 1990s speeches, Duany spoke disapprovingly of a hypothetical, cinema-less downtown Baton Rouge of the future. Ten years later that future is now.

“That’s in our plan,” says Davis Rhorer, director of the Downtown Development District. “It was considered one of the silver bullets, but we prioritized putting the Shaw Center first because we thought having the arts was important.”

Though the Manship Theatre hosts screenings, including the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers series, Rhorer admits a commercial theater downtown would fill a huge void in the regional market. There are no theaters nearby to the north or west across the river. It could also supplement the half-dozen annual film festivals that now call downtown home, including the Jewish Film Festival and the Red Stick International Animation Festival, the way Austin’s commercial theaters support South by Southwest downtown.

“We’ve got an incredible opportunity with three adjacent blocks on the river, and I don’t rule anything out,” Rhorer says. “You’ve got some land there to maybe incorporate a movie theater.”

A lot has changed since Duany came to town. Most urban theaters are no longer economically viable, Solomon says. Worse yet, small movie houses across the country have gone dark while chains gobble up the independents. Take Washington, D.C., for example. One by one its Georgetown-area indie theaters closed in the late 1990s, replaced by giant AMC Loews and AFI screens. Only one independent theater, the nonprofit-run Avalon, remains in the nation’s capital.

Rhorer, however, likes the potential he sees in the redeveloped Kress at Third & Main. Owned by Brace Godfrey and John Schneider’s Cyntreniks, Kress will house a production company, LA Pro Space, and its planned 75-seat screening room. When the company is not using the theater for dailies, it will work with the Baton Rouge Film Commission to host screenings of art films and documentaries, including one on the rich history of the building itself. But as described the off-and-on plan hardly seems like enough to excite droves of the creative class and their parents, making sustainability a major question mark. As nice as it may be, it’s not quite what Duany had in mind.

Back when Duany and Plan Baton Rouge were talking up a movie theater for downtown Baton Rouge, entrepreneur Tim League was hitting on a winning formula of blockbusters, indie films and good food with the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin. From his first downtown Austin location, his Alamos have spread to eight venues, including in Houston and San Antonio. Each Alamo features about 30 beers on tap, wine, coffee, desserts and an array of appetizers, salads, sandwiches, pizzas, and, yes, popcorn and candy. Moviegoers dine while they watch.

When League’s 10-year lease was up at the original location, the Downtown Austin Alliance jumped in to arrange the deal for his new spot a few blocks away on Sixth Street. Keeping League happy and downtown was a top priority. “They brought me and the property owner together and have been very supportive throughout the process,” League says.

With just two screens, the Alamo Ritz has a small footprint on Sixth Street and may be a good model for whatever would happen at Third and Laurel. One is a 180-seat theater for new movies like Speed Racer and Get Smart, and the other is a 90-seat theater for more eclectic programming like independent films, documentaries or Hollywood classics that change almost daily.

League lists three keys for a successful downtown movie theater: a concentrated nightlife center, parking and safe streets. “Although 2,000 permanent residents is not that much, if Baton Rouge has those things to offer, it might be a target for a downtown theater,” League says.

Though much smaller than Austin’s Sixth Street, Baton Rouge’s nightlife downtown centers on Third Street, the spine of the new Arts and Entertainment District. The corridor has a multilevel parking garage open until 3 a.m. Thursday through Saturday, midnight the rest of the week, and surface lots well within walking distance.

Some of Baton Rouge’s pieces are in place, but Rachel DiResto, vice president of the Center for Planning Excellence, says it remains a numbers game. “(The Alamo) is exactly the kind of model we originally tried to do downtown, and there is more of a market for that now, but we need more residential (to attract one),” she says. “Research shows that retail development doesn’t kick in until you hit 5,000 people.”

Even if the downtown population doubles in the next few years, the city may find it easier to attract a chain than something with more character like an Alamo Drafthouse. League admits his is a difficult business.

“There are very few small theaters like this left that do repertory and specialized programming,” League says. “It takes a tremendous amount of effort to keep the Alamo running profitably.”