After a controversial sale and weeks of renovation, downtown Pittsfield’s Beacon Cinema is scheduled to reopen Friday afternoon.
It’s been a busy year for Phoenix Theatres and its CEO Cory Jacobson – and he’s finishing it on North Street, in the heart of Pittsfield.
“I’ve been camped out at Hotel On North, and spending my mornings at Dottie’s," Jacobson told WAMC. "We have, I think, 14 or 15 rooms now at the hotel, so we have an entire crew of people that have come in here for training purposes and cleaning purposes and renovation purposes.”
Phoenix Theatres is based in Farmington, Michigan – a suburb of Detroit. Its almost $650,000 acquisition of the Beacon Cinema is the second out-of-state development for the company in 2018. Many of Jacobson’s team also worked on Phoenix’s new theater in Iowa.
“These guys got a workout in Dubuque earlier this year, so we’re kind of, I should say, reprising our role in cleaning up the Beacon Cinema as well," said the CEO. "So we’ve got two new theaters just in 2018 – which is amazing for us – the size of our company, to have two new businesses this year.”
By way of disclosure, WAMC’s Berkshire Bureau is located in the Beacon Cinema building.
The Beacon – now the fifth theater in the Phoenix family – has gone through some changes since its sale by developer Richard Stanley to the new company.
“We’ve painted the lobby," said Jacobson. "We’ve actually spent a lot of time sanding and revarnishing the classic floors, and just painted throughout the building and did a general cleanup.”
Jacobson says they’ve also added heated reclining seats in every auditorium, as well as upgrading the sound to Dolby 7.1 – offering two more channels of sound from the existing setup.
“It should really make the sound system seem much more immersive, and tuning all the rooms I think will be a big noticeable difference for presentation,” he told WAMC.
In addition to longer hours of operation, the revamped Beacon will have a larger staff.
“We’ve staffed up – I think they’ve hired an extra 15 employees – plus we retained about 10 people, or maybe a few more than that, that were on the original staff here at the Beacon, so that’s been very very positive,” said Jacobson.
The general manager is coming in from Michigan.
While the cinema’s snack offerings will expand, Jacobson says customers can’t buy beer or wine – yet.
“It’s going to be a little bit of time before we can get the beer and wine back on line because we’re really a new business here, so we had to reapply for all these things," he told WAMC. "The state of Massachusetts has a lot of interesting Blue Laws and liquor laws that are a little cumbersome to get through, but in the next few months they promise we’ll be getting that back online again.”
One of the first movies to screen during the Phoenix Theatres era of the Beacon will be Disney’s “Mary Poppins Returns.”
“Which is kind of special for me," said Jacobson, "because it’s one of the first movies that I remember seeing, and I always liked Dick Van Dyke, and it really started my interest in the movie theater business – and Dick Van Dyke is actually in this film, believe it or not – I think he’s 93 years old. He even gets up and sings and dances a little bit.”
The ribbon cutting ceremony for the Beacon’s reopening is set for 3:30 pm Friday afternoon. There’s more about Richard Stanley’s time running the theater here.
