Warner Bros. First Theater in New Castle to Reopen
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- The original Warner Bros. theaters in the Riverplex building should reopen and begin showing motion pictures next Feb. 2, 107 years to the day the first moving pictures were shown in the Cascade Picture Palace at the corner of E. Washington and E. Mill streets.
Negotiations were successfully completed to reopen the first floor of the Riverplex, the four-story building with 78,000 square feet acquired by Refresh Dental Partners, Dr. Andrew Matta, CEO of Refresh, and Jerry Kern, president of the Warner Film Center, jointly announced Wednesday.
They expect the complex to employ 200 when it opens, making it the largest employer in downtown New Castle, Matta and Kern said.
In addition to the restoration of the two nickelodeons the Warner brothers opened -- they seat 100 and 250 patrons -- the Warner Film Center will open a souvenir shop and two state-of-the-art theaters “with the most modern-type of movie equipment,” Kern said Wednesday, which he said is “4G.” Only a very small number of theaters have it, he added.
One movie that will be shown often in the nickelodeons is “The Great Train Robbery,” Kern said, but other black-and-white silent films from the early 20th-century will be shown as well. Documentary films about the Warner brothers will be offered, too. Tourists are most familiar with “Train Robbery” and the state and Lawrence County tourism offices will promote the center.
The two modern theaters, two nickelodeons and souvenir shop will occupy roughly 3,000 square feet of the first floor, Kern said, the largest of the four floors. A restaurant is the other first-floor occupant and space is available for other stores.
Refresh Dental, which paid $1 for the Riverplex, will occupy the second and third floors and the fourth floor, the smallest, remains vacant. Refresh has guaranteed to provide the 3,000 square feet rent-free for a minimum of 20 years, Kern said.
State grants of $22 million and $5 million have allowed restoration of the Riverplex and the original Warner Bros. theaters. Kern and the Warner Film Center are counting on volunteers to restore as much of the two nickelodeons as possible.
The film center will pay for utilities and maintaining the commons area once the theaters begin admitting visitors and tourists.
The original theaters, Kern said, “will be the main attraction, a beautiful, full-scale recreation of the Warner Bros.’ first theater, the Cascade Picture Palace. Visitors will see exactly what the front façade and interior auditoriums looked like when they opened. The décor and every aspect of this re-creation will be as exact as possible.”
The original Cascade Theatre consisted of a lobby and two auditoriums, the film center says. In one theater, customers paid five cents to sit in simple seats and watch movies. The other, with more comfortable seats and a nicer décor, charged patrons 25 cents.
No decision has been made on how much to charge, if anything, tourists and visitors to watch “The Great Train Robbery,” Kern said, but he expect they will be changed “nominal” admission to watch the other period movies brought in.
New documentaries, new independent and foreign films will be shown in the modern theaters.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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