The wholesale rethinking of every detail of a modern movie theatre including its size shape and the services and content it offers is a growing trend in exhibition driven largely by digital cinema technology. While this trend is happening around the world some of it is market specific: what will work beautifully in one theatre won’t necessarily succeed elsewhere. Veteran exhibitors have always had an intuitive understanding of the communities they serve and now as the very idea of exhibition is undergoing a major transition the look and feel of the venue is an even more important element than ever. Gone forever are the days when the goal was to funnel patrons through a tunnel-like configuration geared to get them in sell them popcorn and soda get them seated and get them out. Leading theatres today are created from the ground up as destinations for social events of all kinds. The best examples such as Hollywood Theaters showplace in metropolitan Denver – which was designed by Russell Architects – are doing it in style. Founded in 1991 Hollywood Theaters Portland Oregon has 546 screens at 49 locations in the continental United States Hawaii South Pacific Territories and the Cayman Islands. The company commissioned Russell Architects of Bend Oregon and Mill Valley California to design a state-of-the-art digital projection fourteen-screen VIP theater complex in Southglenn Colorado a suburb of Denver. The theatre is one of the anchors of the new 1.1 million-square-foot Streets at SouthGlenn an outdoor mall complex that replaced an existing enclosed mall. Itself a new design trend instead of simply being a collection of retail outlets the Streets at SouthGlenn is a mixed-use development that includes apartments businesses and a library. The mall has received positive reviews from local architecture critics. Ray Mark Rinaldi of The Denver Post wrote “It's impossible not to appreciate how hard the Streets of SouthGlenn tries or the many places where it succeeds. Or more important the benefits it brings to a sprawling suburb that lacked anything resembling a downtown until now. Centennial is suddenly a more interesting place to live.” “Commercially the Streets of SouthGlenn gets what gives a downtown authenticity: local enterprise. There are large retailers with national names for sure; Sears and Macy's cap the mall's ends. But here the usual anchor store system is reversed. The smaller locally owned eateries and boutiques centered on grassy Commons Park are the real draw. The streets here — also locally owned by Greenwood Village-based Alberta Development Partners — are populated by quaint micro-chains like Diego Zhangs with its fast-casual mini-burgers or independents like the eco-boutique Chrysalis and Sole Food shoes.” “Architecturally speaking this development knows enough to at least mimic the thing that makes a downtown visually compelling: diversity of style. There is still a sameness about 77-acre SouthGlenn mostly the result of shared setbacks building heights that don't vary quite enough repeated materials and uniform sidewalk widths. But the focused team of architects designed in a striking asymmetry too.” One of the challenges for Colin Russell and his team was to create a venue for Hollywood Theaters that would both fit in with the overall complex and make a strong design statement of its own. By all accounts they succeeded. I spoke with Russell via email to learn about the process from start to finish. Digital Cinema Report: How many projects have you done working with Hollywood Theaters? Colin Russell: We’re currently on our third project for them. This was a new build. DCR: What parameters did Hollywood Theaters give you as you started designing? CR: This was their first project with a VIP and full restaurant setup. Hollywood Theaters was not yet fully committed at that time to all digital projection as they are now. So we basically took a standard non-VIP layout and modified it to include the upstairs lounge and a full restaurant bar and kitchen upstairs. The program called for VIP seating at the mezzanine level for all the larger auditoriums. Therefore all the projectors for those auditoriums were placed in small discreet booths within each house on the ground level with the seating working around them. The smaller auditoriums (all those on the front side) are projected from a standard booth at the mezzanine level. It was a pretty tight squeeze but we were able to make it all fit. DCR: What if any constraints did the developers of the Streets at SouthGlenn put on your project? CR: This building lies behind two retail buildings in Block 7 of the Southglenn Mall. We had a fairly constricted pad at the end of a plaza flanked by the retail buildings which necessitated placing the entry on access with the plaza but eccentric within our layout. This made visibility of the building more of an issue as well as circulation around it as clearances between our building and those adjacent was as little as eight feet. DCR: What was the overarching concept for the theater? CR: Hollywood Theaters’ CEO Scott Wallace wanted a state of the art VIP theatre from the start. He was very focused on the design of the bar/lounge pushing for more bling and edgy designs than anything they had done before. He was also very focused on sustainability calling for a story-board setup along the stairs explaining the many ways they were trying to achieve that in their operations: Energy saving lighting and HVAC systems biodegradable tableware and cups post consumer content in the building construction materials etc. The full restaurant was also a new venture. Doug Hawkins head of operations for Hollywood Theaters brought his extensive food service experience to the mix designing the entire menu and presentation. DCR: What sizes are the various theatres and what kind of technology is installed in each? CR: All fourteen screens have Sony 4K projection systems; of those six are 3D. There are six theatres with 99 seats and screens that are 27-feet wide. Two theatres seat 141 people each and have screens that are 31-feet wide. Two seat 227 each and have screens that are 38-feet wide. Two seat 286 each and have screens that are 44-feet wide and finally two theatres have screens that are 48-feet wide and each seats 345 people. DCR: What changes to the projection booth did you make because this was an all-digital theatre? CR: All the VIP seating went to the mezzanine so each auditorium has a small enclosed booth at the ground level. At the time we were in design they were not 100 percent sure they would be going to digital so these booths were design to accommodate either film or digital. Ultimately they went digital. DCR: In what ways is this theatre different from one that you would have designed a decade ago? CR: In terms of the overall layout it is pretty similar and based on the standard film projection model. This means a central spine devoted to corridors at the ground level and a projection booth at the mezzanine. The larger houses are clustered at the center on the rear side and the smaller ones at the ends and in front. This had evolved as the absolutely most efficient layout for film projection allowing all projectors to be run by one person. Film canisters were loaded up there and spliced manually with the ads and trailers then manually loaded onto the platens. As the films’ attendance diminished they were shuttled to the smaller and smaller houses over a period of weeks until they were closed out. Concessions which are the real money maker in the business were strictly ground floor operations and limited to soft drinks and pre-cooked items. Seeing the success of higher end prepared foods and Starbucks coffee during the 1990s and into 2000 the restaurant bar concept seemed a natural progression. The primary differences in this project are (1) the full restaurant/bar/kitchen at the mezzanine level (2) the extra wide extra plush VIP seating at the Mezzanine and (3) the relocation of the projectors to the ground level at the VIP houses. DCR: Where do you see theatre design progressing? What might a theatre a decade from now look like? CR: With the standardization of digital projection theatre design is changing radically. No longer is the projection booth mezzanine floor required which saves substantial construction costs. Thus irregular sites that would have been unsuitable for standard multiplex layouts are now feasible. Film delivery is now by either hard drive (still manually delivered to the site) or satellite which requires no physical moving of product from distributor to exhibitor. All films wind up on the theater’s local on-site servers which occupy a small room that can be located anywhere in the building or for chains of theaters in a central off-site server that feeds several theater locations. On one of our current projects we are making a show of the in house servers with the whole bank of them behind a glass wall within the lobby a la Captain Kirk. (The blinking lights are pretty impressive and futuristic.) From the servers films can be electronically routed to any one or all of the auditoriums with the touch of a button. No more manual splicing no lugging of reels to the platens. Over the past couple of years we have also been looking at many deals involving the conversion of empty big-box stores (most are victims of the recession) into digital cinemas. Without the constraints of the booth along a central spine auditoriums can be oriented in virtually any direction as the feed to the projectors is totally electronic. This makes such conversions economically much more feasible as now the only thing the designer needs to work around are the existing columns within the building. We’re also seeing many more VIP setups than ever. Most are looking at a less comprehensive VIP food service operation with high end pre-prepared meals rather than a full kitchen which is quite expensive to build and operate. All of the models we’ve been looking at still have the standard concessions setup as before. Some VIP versions have designated 4-6 auditoriums out of 14-16 as flex houses which can be used as standard houses or closed off from the rest as needed for VIP showings. This allows more flexibility for the exhibitors. All these options include the VIP Bar and Lounge located adjacent to the designated houses and having separate entrances from the main theater lobby. Lastly there seems to be a trend toward providing one very large screen auditorium in each multiplex. This screen approaches IMAX in size and seats anywhere from 300-500 people. No matter how big your home theatre system is it can’t compete with something this size. It’s all very exciting.
