‘There’s a real need for folks here to have something to do at night.’ : Burbank Going From Film Famine to Feast

With three major motion picture studios, the city of Burbank outdistances Hollywood as the movie capital of the world. But try to find places in town to see the movies they make.

Just try.

The Pickwick Drive-In, a successful but aging edifice with cracked asphalt and peeling paint, would not qualify as a movie palace in anyone’s book. But that has been the only place in Burbank for big-screen entertainment for at least 10 years.

Finally, however, after years of frustration and broken deals, the Pickwick is about to get some competition across town. And Warner Brothers, Columbia and Walt Disney studios, all located in Burbank, will have another local showcase for their films.

On Dec. 12, Burbank will become the home of 10 new movie theaters, all located under one roof on city redevelopment property.

Burbank officials and the theaters’ developer, Victor Georgino, boast that the $6.5-million Burbank AMC 10 will be the most luxurious and largest--when measured by the number of seats--”multi-plex” in Los Angeles County. In addition, they predict that the opening of the cinemas will be a pivotal event in the revitalization of not-so-beautiful downtown Burbank.

“There’s a real need for folks here to have something to do at night,” said Susan Boyle, project manager for the City Centre Redevelopment District, where the theaters will be located. “They want somewhere to go, and this will be just perfect and very convenient. Until now, people have had to get in their cars and drive to North Hollywood or Glendale if they wanted to see a movie.”

The audience for the theaters will be boosted by three youth-oriented restaurants already on First Street, and a Fuddruckers restaurant planned for the Golden Mall, Boyle said. “Within a six- block area, there will be all the entertainment you want,” she said.

The AMC 10, located adjacent to the Golden Mall near the intersection of First Street and Palm Avenue, is a one-story, 36,650-square-foot building with 2,500 seats, a central lobby, offices and storage areas. All of the auditoriums will have Dolby stereo sound, and two of the auditoriums will be able to show 70-millimeter films.

Eight of the theaters will have up to 250 seats each, and the larger ones will have 480 seats each. The Burbank complex will have fewer screens, but more seats, than the Beverly Cineplex at the Beverly Center in Beverly Hills, which has 14 screens and 1,246 seats.

The Burbank auditoriums thus will be much roomier than those at the Cineplex, which resemble small screening rooms.

The Burbank theaters also will feature armrests with holes where viewers can place their soft drinks or popcorn. Speakers will be hidden in the ceiling above the seats as well as above the screen.

One of the theaters will have equipment to add sound tracks to movies, and will be available for rental to studios or film makers, Georgino said.

“With the studios being in our town, it’s only natural that we should have the finest theaters around,” said Georgino, a Burbank real estate developer who is head of a limited partnership with American Multi-Cinema and Richard L. Henson.

But getting the theaters was a long and somewhat heartbreaking process for Burbank and for Georgino, 37, a lifetime resident of the city who recalls going to theaters such as the Magnolia, the Cornell, the Loma and the Burbank when he was a youth.

The last walk-in theater, the Cornell, which was located on San Fernando Road, shut down in the mid-1970s to make way for a condominium project. City officials in recent years have called the lack of a walk-in theater “embarrassing” and “a disgrace.”

Georgino, who has specialized in industrial buildings, said he started trying to bring a theater to Burbank in 1980. He looked first to attract an independent neighborhood theater to the city, but rejected that approach “because they don’t get any of the first-run movies.”

It took several years for Georgino to find a major theater chain willing to locate in Burbank.

“It was real tough trying to sell Burbank as a viable place to have a theater,” he said. “There were all the Johnny Carson jokes about Burbank to contend with, and a lot of people I talked to thought that Burbank was just a sister city to Glendale. But I kept calling.”

He said chains such as United Artists agreed that there was a “crying need” for a theater in Burbank but declined to make a commitment to put a theater there. He almost had an agreement with Pacific Theatres, but it collapsed. High prices for land and a scarcity of sites scared off other potential developers, Georgino said.

Last year, however, Georgino was able to make a deal with Kansas City-based American Multi-Cinema, the nation’s third-largest theater chain, to build the theater complex on city redevelopment property. American Multi-Cinema, which also is planning a 14-screen complex in Century City, will manage the Burbank facility.

According to Burbank officials, marketing studies have concluded that movie theaters built downtown near the Golden State Freeway could draw on more than 300,000 people from Burbank, Glendale, North Hollywood and Sun Valley.

Although there may have been a shortage of walk-in theaters in the east San Fernando Valley in recent years, there may soon be an oversupply. An 18-screen, $10-million complex is scheduled to open in Universal City in June, 1987. That complex will be a short drive by freeway to the Burbank theaters.

Garth Drabinsky, president of chief executive of Cineplex Odeon Corp. of Toronto, which is developing the theaters, said that he is not worried that the area will be saturated with theaters. He brushed off questions of competition with the Burbank theaters, saying the Universal City complex “will not be paralleled in its grandeur.”

Georgino said he is not worried either. “With the tour, the Universal Amphitheatre and the theaters all in the same place, it’s going to be a parking nightmare up there,” he said.

Industry experts say they will be closely watching the progress of the Burbank complex.

“Judging the success of a movie theater by its location is very difficult,” said John Krier, president of Exhibitor Relations Co., which publishes a newsletter for theater managers.

“Often those picked as being successful don’t prove to be that, and others which seem unlikely will come through,” Krier said. “There was great doubt in the beginning that the Beverly Cineplex would be a success. It was a heavy traffic area, and small theaters on the 8th floor of a shopping center was more or less an innovation. But it’s been exceptionally successful.”

Executives of some movie companies are eager for the AMC 10 to open. “There are a disproportionate number of screens in the east San Fernando Valley, but the market has changed,” said Larry Gleason, president of marketing and distribution for De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. “This is right off the freeway, and should be very convenient to people.”

Although the dream Georgino has pursued for years is about to come true, he said there is no time for him to get excited.

“There’s just too many odds and ends to be taken care of,” Georgino said last week. “All my friends ask me if I’m happy, but there’s just too much to be worried about, too much to be concerned with. But I’m sure once the doors are open and the place is running smoothly, I will be ecstatic.”