Column: The Pickwick Theatre may have a new operator in the wings. Here’s what brought the owners to a tipping point
The headlines last week broke sentimental moviegoers’ hearts, in Park Ridge and beyond.
The Pickwick Theatre, the beating heart of the downtown area, was closing, with a farewell screening on Jan. 12, 2023. It was going out the same way it came in for co-owners Dino Vlahakis and Dave Loomos back in 1981, when they took over the theater from Vlahakis’ father with a revival screening of “Gone with the Wind.”
How could this be? Yes, business since March 2020, with its unpredictable stretches of pandemic shutdowns, had been lousy. The reopening hasn’t been much easier, with mainstream Hollywood titles dribbling out at a fraction of pre-COVID release rates.
But the Pickwick? It couldn’t really close, could it?
The likely answer is no. It won’t.
Right now it looks likely to continue its life as a movie house.
“Yesterday, doom and gloom — today is the day of hope!” the ebullient Vlahakis told me, in the Pickwick lobby Thursday, an hour before the evening’s first screening of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
“And tomorrow,” he said, “hopefully, we find the knight in shining armor!”
Since Pioneer Press reporter Caroline Kubzansky broke the news Tuesday that the landmark theater intended to close, the response from readers, moviegoers and a dozen-and-counting interested parties from the film and live entertainment management worlds has been “a beautiful thing,” Vlahakis says. Or, because he’s an exclamation point guy: “a beautiful thing!!”
Potential operators, he says, have been coming by unannounced, and some major Chicago players, including Music Box Theatre owner William Schopf, have meetings scheduled for the coming week. Next week, someone from the live theater business “is coming on a private jet to tour the place. And I couldn’t tell you if I knew who it is, but I don’t even know who it is!”
Of the local interested parties exploring a lease takeover of the Pickwick, a front-runner may be emerging. He is Classic Cinemas CEO Chris Johnson, who owns the Tivoli in Downers Grove, Lake Theatre in Oak Park and other complexes, including the six-screen LaGrange Theatre, which completed renovations earlier this year.
Said Johnson Friday: “Dino and I are longtime friends. He’s got a great theater. He’s looking to get out, and he’s looking for options. And it turns out he has a lot of options.” They come from similar experiences, he says. “Dino started as an usher for the family business when he was 13; I started as an usher when I was 13.” The two men, Johnson says, “have a great relationship. I’m going help him do what’s right for him.”
And, he says, “if that includes me, so be it.”
But let’s go back a week. Here’s what brought Vlahakis, Pickwick Theatre co-owner (and brother-in-law) Loomos and the theater itself to where it is now — in flux, but looking like it won’t be closed for long. In fact, Vlahakis told me, “if we get the right operator to sign, and it’s one of the movie guys, the theater can reopen the day after it closes.”
The Pickwick was “profitable ‘til COVID,” Vlahakis says. But life for a lifelong movie theater owner and operator — Vlahakis and Loomos also run the four-screen “shoebox” theaters behind the Pickwick — had gotten increasingly grim.
“Christmastime,” he says, “we used to get 12, 14 new titles in December. This year we got four. ‘Avatar 2,’ ‘Puss in Boots 2,’ ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody,’ the Whitney Houston movie, and ‘Babylon.’ That’s it.”
January? Never a gold mine for new movies. But January 2023, Vlahakis says, “there’s, like, two movies. Both horror films. And I don’t play horror films. Majority of ‘em, garbage. Don’t like ‘em. Don’t want to play ‘em.”
Adding insult to economic injury, the annual holiday Pickwick Theatre screening of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” offered free of charge with donation for a food drive, was canceled this year. Fathom Events had the film’s rights tied up, and committed to the national theater chains. Dino’s an independent.
“Very disappointing,” he says, quietly.
“If I was maybe 10 years younger” — Vlahakis is 63, and recently became a grandfather — “maybe I’d feel differently. But I don’t know if I want to battle it anymore. I was never intimidated by the coming of DVDs, or cable, because I knew we had a great product. If you had a movie that bombed, a week or two later, you’d have something new and it might be a hit. But when stuff slows down like it has, I’m worried. Memorial Day weekend, you know what my number one movie was? ‘Top Gun: Maverick.’ You know what the number one over Labor Day was? ‘Top Gun: Maverick’!” Like every movie theater owner and operator still in the game, Vlahakis is seriously grateful for Tom Cruise’s insistence on holding his movie for theatrical release, rather than dumping into the raging river of streaming content.
But “Top Gun: Maverick” was just one movie, among not enough others. “So,” Vlahakis says. “That’s how I felt a week ago.”
On Dec. 4, before a matinee screening of “The Polar Express,” Vlahakis told his audience, in effect, thanks for the memories and the support, but that he’d be closing up the Pickwick in January. “Even my brother-in-law said, ‘I didn’t expect you to do that!’” Vlahakis recalls now.
And then? The waves of Pickwick love came crashing in. “We sold a thousand tickets online yesterday,” Vlahakis said. Potential operators came out of the woodwork.
On Thursday, he’s meeting with Park Ridge Mayor Marty Maloney and the city manager to discuss lease options, along with the pros and cons of maintaining the Pickwick as a movie house versus a transformation to a live entertainment venue. The most recent Pioneer Press story, published Saturday morning, runs down the current Park Ridge preservation ordinances which safeguard the Pickwick’s facade and physical structure, though they do not prevent a major renovation inside the venue. (Vlahakis and Loomos own several neighboring buildings along South Prospect Avenue and North Northwest Highway; the real estate comprises 24 tenants in all, with nine storefront properties currently leasing to three restaurants.)
“From a zoning perspective,” Maloney said Friday, “using the Pickwick for movies or for live shows are similar.” It would be “silly,” he said, for its current owners not to entertain all serious options.
“I don’t know what the future of movies holds,” the mayor says. “Myself, I don’t go to the movies as much as I used to. But I’ve been going to the Pickwick since I was a kid. I mean, I saw ‘Star Wars’ there. Clearly the place means something to people. My sister, who lives out in Wheaton, told me the other day: ‘You can’t be the mayor who was running things when they closed the Pickwick for good!’” He laughs the nervous laugh of a man whose future family Thanksgivings are at stake.
Schopf, who meets with Vlahakis Tuesday, has had success over the last three years with the programming at his Music Box Theatre in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. The 1929 theater offers a stimulating array of specialty, revival, independent and studio material all year, along with regular festivals and live events. It’s a destination venue. So is the Pickwick.
“We’ve developed different niche audiences that keep coming back,” Schopf says. “We’re not really focusing on what’s coming out of Hollywood. We’re focusing on the whole world.”
For his part, Johnson of Classic Cinemas believes that taking over the Pickwick lies “completely in our wheelhouse. It’s an unbelievable building. I do own most of my buildings, but with a cooperative owner who understands the risks and rewards of this business, then yeah. I’d do a lease with someone like Dino any day of the week.”
Vlahakis is still marveling at the response.
“I’ll be honest,” he says. “I didn’t think anybody would be interested in taking it over! It’s a beautiful theater but it’s kind of a monster, 900 seats. Too big. For a movie theater today, this is not the right size.” And yet, there’s the Music Box in Lakeview. And the Tivoli in Downers Grove.
For a lot of reasons, Vlahakis says, “I think this story’s gonna have a storybook ending.”
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
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