COMMENTARY: Pullman Square Part of Nationwide Trend of Entertainment Lifestyle Centers Drawing Retail
by Tony Rutherford
Huntington News Network Writer
Huntington (HNN) — Despite the current lack of retail offerings, Pullman Square does have the potential to draw customers with shops, restaurants, retail and entertainment, according to a growing nationwide trend which has developers courting cinema owners much like mall owners court major department stores.So-called “lifestyle centers” — of which Pullman Square is one — fulfill the function of long-lost small-town Main Streets. According to a feature article in Sunday’s (Jan. 23, 2005) Denver Post, developers demand multiplexes.
Kevin Thompson, a theatre consultant who has co-ownership of Phoenix Theatres in Knoxville, Tenn., said “one of the ingredients of a successful lifestyle center is a modern stadium movie theatre — 14 screens and up.”“They bring traffic to the open-air shopping centers,” added Colorado Cinema Group president, Cliff Godfrey.
Developer David Larson, a partner with Legend Retail in Denver, told the Post that the stadium seating cinemas “draw restaurants and spread out traffic throughout the day or into the evening.”
Reporter Kristi Arellano illustrated the principle by focusing on an outdoor section of Bloomfeld’s FlatIron Crossing mall. A 14-screen theatre was the first to open in the lifestyle portion. The mall’s senior marketing manager, Heather Drake, explained how “moviegoers are cross-shoppers. When they come to a movie, they’re eating in restaurants, going into Borders to buy a book.”
The new theatre brought for FlatIron what downtown Huntington craves: An upswing in retail business.However, the Denver article, which revealed 120 screens in various stages of development around that metroplex, warned that the suburban centers will likely pull business from the older metro locations. In fact, a developer’s rule of thumb mandates a minimum of 10,000 residents within a seven-mile radius to support each movie screen.
But these figures do not apply to West Virginia.
For one, research shows that 37 percent of Denver residents see at least one movie a month, which makes it the nation’s best movie going city.
Second, West Virginia does not have the benefit of population growth.
Third, the Pullman lifestyle center hopes to generate traffic downtown in a small city, not in the suburbs of a city whose population reaches upwards of six or seven digits.
Despite those differences, Huntington residents have already noticed an increase in traffic downtown, including people browsing around the Square, even though Starbucks, Empire Books and the Marquee Cinema, are the only establishments open for business. A few "early birds" have made investments in nearby property, like the Emmons Apartments and the refurbishing of some stores on the North side of Third Avenue.
And, Instead of dooming existing theatres, the Pullman project has turned Huntington into a regular stop for relatively recent independent and art films. In fact, critically honored and big city "word-of-mouthers" have stopped in Huntington BEFORE an engagement in Charleston. In order to keep up this pattern, though, West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio moviegoers must support these lesser known, non-mainstream movies. Otherwise, theatre owners might simply dish out more prints of the weekly Top Ten, allowing more times to see fewer titles (i.e. same picture on three or four screens).
Yet, the early results for Huntington contain statistically skewed factors, such as the strength of the Christmas season for the movie business, a "newness" or "curiosity" factor, and steep gasoline prices which may be hurting projections about the vastness of Pullman as a drawing card for surrounding cities.
And, ironically, the one building not under construction at Pullman — the one that replaces Chi Chi's — awaits interest from would-be tenants.
The writer, Tony Rutherford, can be reached by email at .
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