In a letter to city council, Mayfair Theatre owner Lee Demarbre says a 10-screen big box cinema slated for Lansdowne Park would kill the independent movie house.
The latest debate surrounding the future of Lansdowne Park features the independent box office versus the big box.
In a letter written to city council, the owners of the Mayfair Theatre, near Bank and Sunnyside streets, expressed concern over a proposed 10-screen, 4,230-square-metre cinema to go into Lansdowne will “kill the Mayfair Theatre’s business.”
Although the Mayfair does have a niche market, the theatre’s co-owner and programmer Lee Demarbre says the Mayfair thrives off Hollywood movies that have already made their way through major theatres.
“If 10 screens open up across the street from us, I’m not going to be able to book second-run Hollywood movies. People will have gone to see them there and won’t come see them here,” he says. “We just won’t survive.”
But others say the Mayfair has nothing to fear.
“I think they’re underestimating their own power,” says Jeff Polowin, consultant for the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.
He says the Mayfair fails to account for the popularity they have amongst their loyal clientele.
“The Mayfair has a wonderful name across the community and it draws people from all over the city and they do it because they offer quality entertainment, completely different from what’s in the big-time theatres,” he says.
He says he doubts there will be a rivalry between the multi-screen theatre and the Mayfair, but even if there is, Polowin says: “What’s wrong with competition?”
“It will be unfair competition for us,” Demarbre says. “It’s just going to kill the Mayfair.”
Demarbre says he doesn’t know how to operate his business if a big box movie theatre opens so near.
But he says the Mayfair must remain a cinema because it was declared a heritage site last year by the City of Ottawa and cannot be substantially altered.
The same councillors who declared the theatre at 1074 Bank St. a heritage site now appear to be willing to build a new entertainment complex in Lansdowne Park, says Demarbre.
“If they want to kill the idea of this heritage building within less than a year, then go ahead and build the cinema.”
Capital Ward Coun. Clive Doucet says he is upset a complex, including the cinema, is planned to go into Lansdowne.
He says the area around Lansdowne is “where Ottawa’s soul is located” and to build a commercial zone there is “appalling, it’s stomach-turning, it’s incomprehensible.”
But, he says, because it is a leasing agreement, councillors have no say in the matter.
Roger Greenberg, CEO of Minto Developments Inc., the proposed developer for the site, says he is baffled by the letter because the Mayfair has a distinct audience, so the new cinema would have no impact.
“But at the end of the day, even if they were [impacted] that’s part of a business. Nobody granted to any business the licence to be able to be in business in exclusivity of everything around it,” he says.
But Demarbre says the addition of the proposed multiplex cinema should be prevented from becoming a reality in order to preserve the Mayfair as a heritage theatre.
“It just can’t happen,” he says.