A Calverton man who collected 3,100 signatures on a petition supporting the establishment of a national chain movie theater in the Town of Riverhead last night demanded the town board take action.
“Now is the time for a theater to be built in the town,” John Altadonna told board members during the regular monthly meeting last night at Riverhead Town Hall.
“The people of this town deserve a movie theater,” Altadonna said. Riverhead is “big enough” to support a movie theater, he said.
Altadonna said he recognized town officials cannot force a private business to establish a location here. “But the town can make it easier for people to do business in this town— to get a movie theater and the anchor restaurant to support that theater,” he said.
“From what I understand from a lot of business people, the town has a very difficult time getting businesses to come here because of the stringent codes you have in this town,” Altadonna said. “Some may be good but if you don’t give them the resources and the initiative and break down some of these barriers, they’ll never come,” he said.
“A movie theater is the last piece of the puzzle.”
More than two dozen supporters, most of them senior citizens, filled seats in the town hall meeting room. They applauded when Altadonna said Riverhead residents, especially seniors, need a theater locally so they don’t have to travel.
The owner of Riverhead Plaza on Route 58 — the former Walmart site — was negotiating with Regal Cinemas for a couple of years, but was not able to finalize a deal, according to the attorney for the owner, Riverhead PGC, a subsidiary of Manhattan-based Philips International.
“It was very close but they were not able to make a deal with Regal,” Charles Cuddy told RiverheadLOCAL in June 2018.
In June 2017, Philips director of sales and leasing Andrew Aberham and director of development and construction Bill Kugelman told town officials they are committed to building a theater at the site — with or without Regal.
“We will go forward with another operator” if Regal backed out, Aberham told the town board during a June 8, 2017 work session.
Philips International officials had submitted a preliminary site plan as well as building elevations. The Zoning Board of Appeals approved several necessary variances — Regal Cinemas actually sent representatives to testify at the ZBA hearing — and Philips met with the town’s architectural review board to get input on the building design.
Philips planned to demolish 71,000 square feet of existing structure and construct a freestanding 51,000-square-foot building for a 10-screen, 1,490-seat movie theater.
It also planned to build two freestanding restaurants on the north portion of the site, in what is now excess parking area. One would be a 2,600-square-foot, 126-seat restaurant with a drive-thru window. The other would be a 7,560-square-foot, 220-seat restaurant.
The company said it would seek Riverhead Industrial Development Agency benefits for the redevelopment of the derelict site vacated in 2013 by Walmart, which moved to a newly built shopping center on the western end of Route 58.
But Philips has so far not pursued the plans any further. Aberham could not immediately be reached for comment for this article.
Last night, Councilman James Wooten speculated that there might be renewed interest in Riverhead by movie theater companies because “Hampton Bays just closed their movie theater,” he said.
However, the Regal/UA Hampton Bays theater on Montauk Highway is still operating. The owner of the shopping center where the theater is located has submitted an application to the Southampton Town planning board to convert the space where the theater is located into a CVS drug store, according to a May 21 article on the 27East news website.
Wooten told Altadonna he was “kind of a little affronted… that somehow you’re blaming us” for Riverhead not having a movie theater.
“Believe me, we have worked very hard to get a movie theater to come to this town,” he said. “We’ve changed zoning… We’re all in lock step with you. This board has not thwarted anything. It’s private industry — that’s what America is all about,” Wooten said.
Prior to 2004, the town board approved five special permits for movie theaters at various Route 58 sites; none of the plans moved forward.
The board in 2004 changed the town zoning code to limit movie theaters to the downtown district, hoping a movie theater would spur downtown revitalization. Former supervisor Sean Walter worked to lure Regal Cinemas to the former Woolworth building site on Main Street, but the company ultimately was not interested in building downtown.
In 2016 amended the zoning code again to allow movie theaters on Route 58 once more.
Still, Altadonna said the town board should do more.
“As long as Hollywood is making movies, there are people who want to go out and see them,” he said.
Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith said the town has written to the movie theater chains and has reached out to “90 percent of the developers that have space on Route 58. Many of them have reached out and tried to get one,” she said.
“It’s a challenge,” Jens-Smith said. “The market of the movie theater is not expanding.”
Movie theater ticket sales in the U.S. have been declining since about 2002. Ticket sales increased 4.9 percent in 2018 compared to 2017, but 2017 sales were at a 25-year low, according to industry analysts. Analysts attribute the decline to at-home entertainment technology that allows consumers to have high-quality, low-cost entertainment experiences in their own homes, plus the rise of video streaming services and the production of top-quality original video content by streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.
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