Â
As most of you have heard by now, yesterday marked the final performance of our beloved Warner Movie Theater in downtown Ridgewood. Losing this movie theater is truly one of the saddest days our central business district has ever experienced.
We all know the reasons behind it. With the advent of streaming services, attendance has dwindled to a trickle. Consequently, it has become almost impossible for small movie theaters to survive in the digital age. The company that owns the theater had, at one time, 70 movie theater locations across the country. Today they have only two theaters remaining.
The Warner Theater opened in 1932 with a screening of The Dark Horse, a Bette Davis movie. At that time, the Warner was a grand and beautiful single auditorium movie theater. When my children were small, we made a pact that we would come to this theater to watch all the new James Bond movies when they came out. And for many years we did. The closing of this movie theater is truly the end of an era for us all that will create a void for our community that will be difficult to fill.
I have had several discussions with the theater owners during the course of last week, who have been incredibly forthcoming with the status of the theater going forward. Here's what we know.
Deputy Mayor Pam Perron and I met with representatives of the theater this past Friday morning, along with construction and fire officials from the Village, to discuss taking down the partitioning walls that converted it into a four screen theater decades ago. They will also be removing all of the seating in the theater and anything that is not part of the original 1932 theater. There will be no construction or installation of new seating, stages or anything that would make it a functioning theater at this point. They anticipate beginning this work within the next month and expect the project to take about three to four weeks.
Once this demolition work is completed, the Warner theater will be single auditorium theater once again. The hope of the theater owners is to ultimately return the theater to its original grandeur by converting it into a performing arts center that will be both financially viable and of benefit to our community. And while they have already begun investigating this possibility, returning the theater to a single auditorium theater is the first step.
Since the announcement of the Warner’s closing last week I have had hundreds of calls, texts and e-mails from residents of our community offering to support the establishment of a performing arts center, as well as those who hope there is a way to save the movie theater. Let me begin by saying that we are less than a week into this process and it is far too soon to know what the Warner will look like going forward. Just as importantly, it is important to understand that while the theater belongs to our community in so many ways, this is a privately owned business on private property.Â
To that end we will continue to work with the Warner to assist them in turning this theater, that is such a central part of our community, into a theater that will serve our Village for another 100 years.
Stay tuned.
Paul Vagianos
Mayor
Village of Ridgewood
131 N. Maple Avenue
Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Â
Â
-PLEASE SHARE WITH FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS-
