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By JON FOX [email protected]
Sunday, August 01, 2004 Page: 1A
EDWARDSVILLE – Signs affixed to faded storefronts advertise the typical
strip mall fare: a nail salon, a Chinese restaurant, a pizza place, a
laundromat, a pet store.
An office supply store occupies part of a run-down, white building beached
in a whale of a parking lot. A banner draped across its windows tells all it
will soon close its doors forever.
On a recent sunny weekday afternoon, there was little foot traffic at the
West Side Mall.
Developers say the ailing shopping center and the borough were on the brink
of receiving a vitamin-packed booster shot: a new 14-screen movie theater.
Marquee Cinemas, a West Virginia-based theater company, was poised to build
the stadium-style theater next to the vacant Ames department store. Then a
conversation with the president of R/C Theaters, planned tenant of
Wilkes-Barre’s proposed downtown theater, put an abrupt halt to those plans.
“We were so close to really making it happen,” said Dan Shabel with Fameco
Real Estate, leasing agent for the mall.
On July 20, the project’s developers received planning approval and were
prepared to break ground within about 30 days, Shabel said. The following day,
Wilkes-Barre officials announced details of the much anticipated downtown
theater project.
Dave Beauregard, a representative of Marquee Cinemas, seemed undeterred
until a Monday evening phone conversation with R/C Theater President Wayne
Anderson.
“If we’re ready to go and they’re not, we should proceed. I think we have
the better site,” he said during a telephone interview Monday afternoon.
“We’re ready to step up and move forward.”
But after speaking to Anderson, Beauregard’s bullish view of the
Edwardsville project had soured. “I have to take him at his word,” he said
after speaking to Anderson. “They’ll be going forward at this time.”
The West Side theater was dead.
Beauregard was concerned that with the public money lined up behind the
South Main Street Revitalization Project, R/C Theaters could undercut Marquee
Cinemas by as much as $2 a ticket, Shabel said.
“We’re heartbroken over this,” said Edwardsville Borough Council President
Jim Hankey. “When this plan came down last Tuesday I was just elated. To me
the theater was the thing that was going to rebuild that whole strip there,
both sides of Route 11.”
When Beauregard balked on the project, “it was like the bubble burst,”
Hankey said.
Hankey said he, with other members of council, are discouraged and without
a catalyst for development along Route 11.
“The shopping center has declined for the past 12 years,” he said. “There’s
not much we can do. We don’t have money we can give a developer.”
Where does that leave the West Side Mall and Edwardsville? As the private
theater project suddenly offered up a dying breath, accompanying development
slipped away.
“If we had the theater deal, the developer would have gone forward with a
face-lift of the whole center,” Shabel said. Edwardsville Mall Associates had
planned to detach a Rite Aid drug store from the building in the center of the
parking lot and demolish much of the old building to make way for new tenants.
“We were hoping to put in two or three restaurants.”
Ted Tsioles, owner of a Curry Donut franchise and tenant of the West Side
Mall for more than 10 years, questioned the $2.5 million in county funds going
toward the Wilkes-Barre theater project when private development was lined up
on his side of the river.
“If a private individual was going to build something up with his own
money, I think, `Why build over there?'” he said, leaning on the counter. “The
county money should be used for other purposes.”
Clustered around the cash register at Ollie’s Family Restaurant near the
front of the mall’s parking lot, employees said they’ve watched businesses
desert the West Side Mall and nearby shopping centers for years.
Why chase a downtown revitalization dream when Edwardsville is ready for a
multiplex? asked Denise Sack.
“This is already an established area,” she said. “Here it’s still safe and
functional.”
Downtown Wilkes-Barre is a different story, she said. “Downtown they’ll
need more than a movie theater to bring people in.”
Jon Fox, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7219.
cutline:
TIMES LEADER STAFF PHOTO/FRED ADAMS
Disappointment in Edwardsville. Councilman John Sedeski points out to
council President Jim Hankey where a 14-screen movie theater was to have been
built at the West Side Mall. The developer blames public money behind the
downtown theater in Wilkes-Barre for bringing down the curtain on the
privately funded endeavor.