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Liquor license application at Regal UA Hampton Bays
The Regal UA Hampton Bays movie theater.
A sign in the window at the Regal UA Hampton Bays movie theater may portend a hopeful sign of things to come for local movie fans: The theater has applied for a liquor license with the New York State Liquor Authority.
And why would it do that if it’s going out of business?
It may not be: That application dovetails with fresh news that Regal UA’s corporate owner, Cineworld, emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy just last week — and, with that, news that the Hampton Bays theater had survived a purge of dozens of Cineworld leases around the country as part of its restructuring.
Walter Morris, chief executive officer at WDP Enterprises, is the owner and property manager of the strip mall that houses the theater. He said this week that in the wake of the bankruptcy proceedings, the movie theater is continuing with a month-to-month lease with him, at a reduced rent.
And Morris said Cineworld has informed him that “they do want to keep this theater open.”
That’s a remarkable turn of events. Just a few years ago, Morris recalled, Cineworld told Morris that it would not be keeping the theater, “and they asked me to go look for a replacement tenant,” he said. Morris owns other properties in the region where CVS is a tenant, and he thought the drugstore giant would be a good fit for Hampton Bays.
But, four years later, Morris said the CVS plan is going nowhere.
“It is a long and extensive process, and that process has stalled,” Morris said of CVS’s site plan application under consideration by the town Planning Board.
“Whether it will ever get done or not, I wish I knew. In the meantime, I’m very happy that the movie theater is still there,” Morris said. “The manager is terrific, and the company is terrific.”
Morris said he would “love to sign a new long-term lease” with Cineworld, but to date the UK-based company has been unwilling to do so, owing, Morris said, to the uncertainty swirling around movie theaters in the era of digital streaming.
And it didn’t help the landlord or the tenant that COVID-19 forced the theater to close for more than a year.
As part of its restructuring, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas agreed to allow Cineworld to shed dozens of theater leases from its portfolio as it set out to write off billions of dollars in debt.
Business Insider was the first to report that the company was given permission by the court to walk away from 47 leases back in April, following its bankruptcy announcement last September.
The Hampton Bays theater was not on that list.
In announcing its emergence from bankruptcy, a July 31 press release from Cineworld said the company had shed $4.53 billion in debt, raised about $800 million, and secured new debt financing of $1.7 billion.
This will help the company, said the release, to “continue providing leading cinematic experiences for customers globally, including through investments in new screen formats and enhancements to its flagship theaters.”
The company also went through a restructuring at the top: It created a newly incorporated parent company called New Cineworld, with a new board and a new board of directors.
And, in choosing a new CEO, New Cineworld picked Eduardo Acuna, a native of Brazil. Acuna was previously an executive at Cinepolis, a Mexico-based company with a subsidiary that operates dozens of Spanish-language movie theaters in the United States. Acuna was president of Cinepolis’s American division when he was selected as New Cineworld’s CEO.
Perhaps notably, Regal UA currently offers movie showings in Spanish and English. The theater is currently reaping the ticket-sale benefits of a nationwide “Barbieheimer” double-feature movie craze this summer — offering the films in both Spanish and English. Now it is anticipating additional potential revenue from the sale of alcoholic beverages.
According to state records, the Regal UA liquor license application was initiated on April 19 with the State Liquor Authority and would permit wine sales at the movie theater. The application is pending.
Morris said he hoped the wine sales plan would find favor with the Town of Southampton. “I think that is a biggie, and I hope the town will look upon it positively,” he said.
Morris said he would continue to keep Cineworld as a tenant — for now.
“It’s not a rent that we can accept forever,” Morris said. He didn’t get into the specifics of the monthly rent but said he had reduced it by 10 percent.
Still, in movie terms, this ongoing cinema-versus-CVS saga remains a cliffhanger: Morris also made clear that he is not giving up on CVS and that either tenant would be welcome in the space. “My biggest hope is that one of them could make it,” he said.
Morris has done what he can with the CVS proposal, he said, “to help expedite that deal and push it forward — but that’s between CVS and the Planning Board now.”
The board held a public hearing on a revised CVS site-plan proposal in May that was dominated by residents’ concerns over the CVS proposal, citing the potential for additional traffic and the loss of a local institution that is one of the only movie theaters remaining on the South Fork.
After the drugstore giant’s initial 2019 foray into Hampton Bays, the board has gone back to CVS as recently as June with requested changes to its original site plan — when it recommended “additional landscaping and evergreens in the parking lot, solar energy, and a charging station,” according to town documents.
Liz Hook is a Hampton Bays lawyer and a director on the board of the Hampton Bays Civic Association. She says that retaining the movie theater has been “high on the agenda for the Civic and for our membership — we’ve had a committee looking into cultural affairs and one of the issues they’ve looked at is keeping the theater in lieu of the drugstore. The theater is something that everybody had been worried about losing, because it’s one of the few theaters around and is a far better use for the property than a CVS.”
The Hampton Bays Civic Association, she said, has been “overwhelmingly supportive of the movie theater,” as she applauded Cineworld’s effort to keep the theater open as a resident and moviegoer in the hamlet. “From my perspective, this is excellent, excellent news,” she said.
HBCA President Geraldine Spinella joined Hook in applauding the provisional good news and also highlighted that when theater manager Mary Russo began offering Spanish language movies last year, it was met “with great enthusiasm.”
The theater wants to stay and we are “thrilled at the news,” said Spinella via email. “We will coordinate with the theater and the property owner to have a welcome party as soon as all is confirmed!”
Meanwhile, multiple emails sent to the New York City public relations firm that represents Cineworld were met with the sound of one hand clapping.
