Editorial: Bringing back movies to the Mills is a welcome sign

Closings are something that are a little too familiar right now.

They aren’t new, of course. Too many Southwestern Pennsylvania towns have Main Streets strewn with shuttered storefronts. Many shopping malls are shells of their former selves. The coronavirus pandemic has hastened what might have been a chronic illness, pulling the plug on the desperately needed life support of patrons.

So it is always welcome news when someone is willing to look at the economic landscape and the inventory of empty properties and decide to try to make it work.

In 2020, theaters were among businesses closed as non-essential in the early days of covid-19 response. Two months later, Cinemark announced it was closing its Pittsburgh Mills location permanently, just two years after it had made plans to make the venue more luxe with alcoholic beverage service and plush reclining seats.

It isn’t the only theater killed off by the pandemic. The AMC Delmont movieplex closed in March and never reopened and is on its way to becoming a Busy Beaver. The South Side live music hall Rex Theater announced it was taking its last bow in September.

But last week, the movie screens at the Mills got a curtain call. Michigan-based GQT Movies confirmed it was taking over the Cinemark space.

“I think it’s going to be able to do a lot for the mall,” President Mark McSparin said. “I think it’s going to drive a lot of traffic to that area.”

That would be great. Traffic is what the Pittsburgh Mills has always needed.

What is important is to have more than a will to get the traffic. There have to be plans for a way to bring it in.

And GQT Movies may have that. McSparin and his partners Igal Namdar and Elliot Nassim seem to have insight into what the mall needs. After all, Namdar is the CEO of Namdar Realty Group and Nassim is the president of Mason Asset Management. Those companies own and manage the Mills. McSparin owns VIP Cinemas, so the expertise is there.

Plans to start out with movies on six screens instead of all 18 sound smart. It’s easier to fix a small problem than a big one. The goal of accessible ticket prices is another light bulb since movies can be family activities, but families are frequently priced out of attending them.

“We’re coming in as a value-priced alternative in the market,” McSparin said. “We’ll have everything they had before, only we’ll probably be about 30% cheaper on tickets and we’ll probably be about 40% cheaper on concessions.”

That is a particularly good idea as everyone hopes to emerge from the pandemic in the near future, and perhaps the one upside of being locked down was that renting a pay-per-view first-run movie cost about $20 for the whole family instead of $12 apiece for four or five people, with snacks readily available for free in the kitchen.

Reinventing malls and the destination spots they rely on has been an important economic move for years that just hasn’t seemed to be addressed properly. Reinventing businesses for a post-pandemic economy is going to be even more critical. We can’t say whether GQT Movies has right script, but the coming attractions seem promising.