On Wisconsin: A community saves the Towne

Source: The Wisconsin State JournalOct.mini storage 20--WATERTOWN -- The Towne Cinema shouldn't be in business, especially when the price of a ticket is only $3.And these are first-run movies. Last week's lineup included the George Clooney and Sandra Bullock space thriller "Gravity" and the animated "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs II."Then there's the whole digital conversion issue. The country's major film companies soon no longer will send large reels of film to movie houses. By the end of this year, any theater that hasn't spent about $32,000 per screen to convert to the digital format likely will be out of business.Remarkably, this theater -- which opened in 1913 as a live performance venue more than a dozen years before "The Jazz Singer" debuted as the first talking movie -- is making a go of it in this city's downtown.A Kickstarter fundraising campaign in the spring raised $70,000 in 60 days to convert two of the theater's three screens to digital. And the owner of the theater, a retired Oconomowoc math teacher and football, basketball and track coach, said he isn't fazed by the multiplex 8 miles to the south in Johnson Creek.Many of John Bendall's customers are from Fort Atkinson and Jefferson. They drive right past the 12-screen AMC Star where tickets can top $10 and surpass $13 for a 3D flick."I'm sure we've put a big dent in their gross," said Bendall, who purchased the Towne in 2002. "My focus on this building and this business is that they remain viable. I've always thought, get them through the door and make your money on concessions."At first, the movie companies cringed at Bendall's ticket prices, but he said "we're putting enough people through the door that they're happy with us." Movie companies typically get about 70 percent of a ticket the first week, 60 percent the second week but no less than 35 percent through a movie's run, he said.The Towne is an anomaly. Independently owned movie theaters, once the norm in downtown America, have largely been shuttered. Places including Stoughton, Boscobel, Prairie du Sac and Dodgeville have bucked the trend. But movie theaters in scores of Wisconsin communities have closed, been converted to other uses or have met the wrecking ball.When Bendall, 59, was growing up in Lake Mills in the 1960s and early 1970s, there was a movie theater just off the city's town square. He also saw shows at theaters in Waterloo, Fort Atkinson, Watertown, Oconomowoc and, on adventurous nights, in Downtown Madison at places including the Orpheum, Majestic, Esquire and the Strand.Today, only the Towne remains a traditional movie house.So this coming weekend, in conjunction with Pumpkin Palooza, Watertown's downtown Halloween celebration, the Towne will celebrate its 100th anniversary.There will be free showings of "Casper" on Saturday and Sunday during the day, while on Saturday night and on Halloween night, the Jack Nicholson classic thriller "The Shining" will light up one of the theater's three screens."It's because of the community that we're still here," said Bendall, a UW-Whitewater graduate, who also owns On the Rock, a restaurant on the city's east side along the Rock River. "The population is getting quite large, but it's still a small town attitude and atmosphere."We live in a time in which many movies are either str儲存amed into our home or seen in multimillion-dollar cinemas with amenities including restaurants, bars, parking structures and ticket prices that can top $10.For most of its life, the Towne was a single-screen theater with parking on surrounding streets and dinner and drinks available at several downtown restaurants and bars.This is where, in 1975, shortly after finishing the fifth grade, my mother let me see "Jaws." In 1980, I nervously stood in line and lied about my age to get into the R-rated "The Blues Brothers" movie. In the late 1980s, the 500-seat main auditorium downsized to 200 seats to make way for a second screen and 130-seat auditorium.In the early 1990s, a former hat shop was converted into a third, 55-seat theater. It still uses film and could one day be a home for independent films or locally produced movies that haven't transitioned to digital."I think there's a customer base for it," said Matt Sampon, 35, the theater's manager.There was a time when the Towne, one of the oldest businesses on this city's Main Street, almost didn't make it.Bendall ran the theater from 2002 until 2004. After that, he leased the business to other operators, the most recent of whom also ran the Rosebud and the Times theaters in the Milwaukee area. That operator sold beer and wine and charged $7 a ticket.That business model lasted only about a year before the theater closed in early 2011 -- some thought for good.But Bendall, and Sampon, who worked for the previous operator at the Rosebud and the Times, reopened the Towne in February 2011, lowering the ticket prices to $3.Two years later, it was Sampon who convinced Bendall to try Kickstarter to raise money for the digital conversion. After all, Sampon saw it work for a friend and his band, so why not for a movie theater?"When I approached John with it, I knew he was not taking me seriously at all," Sampon said.Once the fundraising campaign began, it was far from a lock. The effort got stuck at $16,000 for two weeks. Halfway through, just $20,000 had been raised. It later stalled at $35,000."It was pretty bleak," said Laurraine Van Hecke, 30, the concessions manager and a Watertown native. "Had we shut down, it would have been bad for other businesses down here."Some individuals donated a few dollars, others hundreds. The Young Executives for Success organization raised almost $4,000 for the theater. Naming rights for two of the auditoriums raised sizable chunks of cash. One is now known as the "Nick Witte CFP Theater," the other as "Bobby's Theater."Special events also were held to raise money. The Watertown Players had a Vaudeville show. Area businesses held their own fundraisers for the theater, some of them collecting $2,000 or more.The successful fundraising effort means the show will go on for years to come at the Towne, which has one of the lowest ticket prices in the country."Watertown loves this place, and Watertown loves its history," Sampon said. "It's perfect."Barry Adams covers regional news for the Wisconsin State Journal. Send him ideas for On Wisconsin at 608-252-6148 or by email at badams@madison.com.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.) Visit The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wis.) at .wisconsinstatejournal.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉