By Ashley Perham
For HDMedia
For the past two years, Charleston Parking Director Terri Allen and her team have been maintaining an empty movie theater in the bottom of the city’s 600 Washington St. E. parking garage.
Park Place Stadium Cinemas closed in May 2024 after 43 years in business. Ownership told the Gazette-Mail at the time the closure was because of a tough theater business in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strike.
Allen, who said she didn’t even know how to turn on a projector when the building came into her care, has had her department maintain the projectors, upgraded the servers and completed HVAC and plumbing work.
“We wanted to keep it as ready … as possible,” Allen said.
Now, former general managers Robert Faulkner and Mike Tawney are bringing the theater back.
The cinema will open April 1, just in time for the opening weekend of the new film, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.”
Monday night, the Charleston City Council approved the lease between Faulkner and Tawney’s company and the city. The Greater Charleston Theater Company and Entertainment Group will pay utilities on the building and 50 cents for every ticket it sells.
Seating 1,900 patrons, nine of the 11 theaters will play first-run movies. The other two will be used for private and special events.
And the all-you-can-eat popcorn and all-you-can-drink soda will return to the cinema, which first opened in December 1980.
A lot of life happened here
Faulkner, a St. Albans resident, worked at Park Place from 1993 to 2008. He met his wife at Park Place.
“A lot of my life happened in this theater. I met lifelong friends. I spent time working here, spent my off time here, and it’s just something that I feel like I need back,” he said.
The first movie he watched at Park Place was “Menace II Society,” a 1993 teen crime drama.
“I talked my parents into letting me ride the bus for the first time down here and watched it,” he said.
Faulkner said people have missed the theater. There are a lot of movie buffs who can’t make it to the theaters at Southridge or Nitro but, with the nearby bus transit mall, they can get to Park Place.
He said his company plans to open the theater as-is and build toward changes and upgrades.
Last fall, the West Virginia International Film Festival showed several independent films at Park Place. WVIFF board member and At-large Councilmember Emmett Pepper said the WVIFF wanted to show there was still interest in the space and that it could still work.
Pepper worked at the theater in the 1990s and would linger in the theaters for some of the movies on his shift.
“I was really sad when it closed,” he said. “I think people are really excited to be able to be back in that space. I think that there’s going to be also an opportunity to do things a little [differently] and to … experiment with things, find new ways to bring cinema.”
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