Joan Coe
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A MASSIVE VACANCY - 2008/03/25 17:08
This article was published in The Hartford Courant.
CONNECTICUT PROPERTY LINE
A Massive Vacancy
A Closed Cineplex Leaves A Huge Shell And A Hard Sell
LINDA SMITH has a view from her home of the vacant parking lot of the 12-screen Showcase Cinemas East Windsor, recently closed. Smith fought the 1994 construction of the cinema. (MICHAEL MCANDREWS / March 18, 2008)
By LYNN DOAN | Courant Staff Writer
March 25, 2008
EAST WINDSOR - In a picture hanging on Linda Smith's living room wall, her house is surrounded by budding trees. You can almost make out a small pond in the background where she ice-skated as a girl.
Those trees were uprooted and the surrounding farmland destroyed in 1994 to make way for a 12-screen, 3,000-seat movie theater, despite neighbors' pleas for a less invasive type of development. The pond was filled with concrete to make way for a row of handicapped parking spaces, and traffic began flying by Smith's street to get to the only cineplex in town.
Now, after less than 14 years in business, Showcase Cinemas East Windsor has gone out of business. Theater owner National Amusements Inc. decided last month to shut the $10 million theater down, declaring it "no longer financially viable."
This has left the town with a massive, 74,000-square-foot complex, specifically designed for a single use, lying vacant on one of its most visibly prominent spots off I-91. The empty theater is a prime example of an emerging group of large, abandoned retail buildings that have become eyesores in towns and cities across the state as developers struggle to think of feasible ways to re-use them.
Researchers have begun to refer to these gigantic shells as "gray fields."
"They're these sort of large commercial areas with large parking lots that have come to the end of their lives," said John Rozum, who directs a UConn program that links land use and natural resource protection, " and everybody is sort of scratching their heads and thinking, 'What do we do with this?' "
National Amusements declined to comment on how much the cineplex returned to the company on its initial investment.
Town officials saw National Amusements as a savior of sorts when it arrived in the 1990s.
The town's sewer plant was aging at the time and reaching capacity, said James Richards, a member of the economic development commission and executive director of the East Windsor Chamber of Commerce. The theater provided the push necessary to expand the plant, creating the capacity for even more business in town, Richards said.
This prompted a rapid boom in commercial development along I-91 and Route 5 that included a Wal-Mart, a supermarket complex and two hotels. The town ranked 30th among 169 towns in terms of percentage increase in land covered by buildings and roads between 1985 and 2002, according to a study by UConn's Center for Land Use Education and Research.
"That theater put East Windsor on the map," Richards said. "East Windsor basically became a spot where business can be done."
Some residents fought against the theater, preferring a cluster of doctor's offices or a trucking company. But the town's planning and zoning commission eventually approved it.
"The area was a prime location for retail business, whether it was a movie theater or another use," said First Selectwoman Denise Menard, who served on the planning and zoning commission at the time the theater was built. "I don't see [the years the theater operated] as a waste of time. I only wish that they had stayed longer."
Among those who opposed the theater was Smith, who feared it would bring traffic and crime. After the project was approved, she watched and videotaped as crews tore up the trees surrounding her house.
"It was heartbreaking," she said, peering out of her living room window, which now overlooks the theater parking lot. "And for what? They invested all that for nothing. What is going to go in there now?"
The Bones Of The Building
Land-use researchers, developers and real estate brokers are also waiting to see what will come of the empty theater. They are discovering that large retail buildings, particularly movie theaters, that require expansive parking lots have become nearly impossible to redevelop.
The term "gray fields" stems from "brown fields" — large industrial plants that have been abandoned and are commonly difficult to redevelop because of contamination concerns.
When it comes to empty movie theaters though, contamination is the least of a developer's worries.
It is the "bones of the building" — the way the slabs are poured, the ceiling heights, the rectangular rooms on different levels with seating — that make a theater difficult to redevelop, said Jonathan Putnam, a commercial real estate broker and senior director at Cushman and Wakefield.
A Showcase Cinemas theater in East Hartford, which National Amusements shut down about two years ago, remains empty, despite the town's efforts to market the site. A company spokeswoman would not comment specifically on possible new developments for the East Hartford or East Windsor sites.
"Both properties are available for development [other than a Cinema use]," spokeswoman Wanda Whitson said in a written statement. "There is nothing else to report."
Jim Gibbons, a land-use specialist at UConn, recently warned local officials in a talk about big structures like Wal-Marts and movie theaters.
"When they become vacant, they are these huge, empty shells that are extremely difficult to remodel for another use," he said. "The land becomes way more valuable than the structure."
East Windsor officials have remained optimistic about redevelopment on the 26.6-acre Prospect Hill Road site.
Ideally, Menard said, the town would like to see another theater chain snatch up the property. But because National Amusements is not entertaining offers to redevelop the site as a new cinema — and developers may not find a theater financially viable — the town is open to all options, she said.
Richards said he has in mind an outdoor shopping center, along the lines of Evergreen Walk in South Windsor, or perhaps another type of "box store," like Wal-Mart.
But he acknowledges that it could take some time because of the theater now lying vacant on the land.
"In the short term, it's awful. We've got a building empty with nobody to fill it," Richards said. "But I'm confident that, with the access and the locale, in the long run, somebody's going to say, 'What a real nice spot to put a store.'"
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