DOBBS FERRY, N.Y. — Even during film awards season, there have not been many theaters where residents of Westchester County could see quirky independent or foreign contenders like “Nebraska,” “Philomena” or “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Until the last few years, there has often been just one such dependable locale, the 12-year-old nonprofit Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, the county’s only true art house. But now a heavyweight rival looms on the horizon, an eight-screen, 1,200-seat theater in this Hudson River town with the pedigree of Robert Redford and the Sundance brand behind it, and some people at Jacob Burns are not exactly delighted. One person familiar with the views of some people in management about the Sundance interloper said, “It would be better if it does not go up.” “It’s a bummer but not a dagger at our hearts,” said the person, who requested anonymity because this person was not authorized to speak for the theater. “We’re the poster child for what art houses want to be. We turn around and discover that Sundance tries to build this one theater 11 miles away.” Stephen Apkon, founder and executive director of Jacob Burns, said in an interview that he questioned the new theater’s location because it would create traffic jams, but he denied being troubled by Sundance as a competitor. “I think Westchester is an extraordinarily vibrant place for films, so it’s not surprising that Sundance would be interested in coming here,” he said. “There undoubtedly will be films that overlap, but the vast majority of what we do wouldn’t be found on any of these other screens.” Nevertheless, the new Sundance Cinemas theater raises the question: Can Westchester, which is among the nation’s richest and best-educated counties, support several houses for showing foreign or independent films as, say, Manhattan does? And if one house shows Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine,” will there be enough moviegoers to fill the showing of “Blue Jasmine” in a second house a 15-minute drive away? Although they are not classic art houses, with their festivals featuring a single director, actor or theme, there are also at least two Westchester theaters that in the past year or so have regularly been showing nonmainstream films on some of their multiple screens: the six-screen Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers, which opened last summer, and the four-screen Cinema 100 in Greenburgh, owned since June by Bow Tie Cinemas, a Connecticut chain of 60 theaters in six states. But for local cineastes, Burns, supported by memberships as well as individual tickets, has long been the gold standard. Within the walls of a refurbished 1920s movie house, it runs Italian and Jewish film festivals, documentary series around such themes as “crisis, conflicts and human rights” and a collection of films about dance. All through the year, it provides programs for young people, cultivating a generation of future filmmakers and film buffs. It has held a series of “rarely seen cinema” curated by the director Jonathan Demme. Just since September, it has held programs hosted in person by Billy Crystal, Richard Gere and David O. Russell, the director of “American Hustle.” Woody Allen, George Clooney, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep and Mr. Redford himself have all been interviewed on the Burns stage. Paul Feiner, the supervisor of the Town of Greenburgh, said he believed Westchester would be able to absorb another art house in stride. “Jacob Burns has to be creative,” he said, “It’s the American way. They will have to work harder.” Still the rival cannot help but make Burns nervous. It is being opened by Sundance Cinemas, part of Mr. Redford’s empire, though it will be operated for profit by investors. Begun in 2006, the company has opened theaters in Houston; Madison, Wis.; San Francisco; Seattle; and West Hollywood, Calif. These show commercially popular films like “Gravity,” but also, as the recent bill in West Hollywood indicates, precisely the kinds of films that Jacob Burns thrives on: “Nebraska,” “Philomena” and the French film “Blue Is the Warmest Color.” Like Burns and Alamo, the Sundance theater will feature discussions with filmmakers. It will also have an art gallery and a bistro. “We believe that interest in film builds more interest in film,” Nancy Klasky Gribler, vice president of marketing for Sundance Cinema, said in an email interview. “All of our theaters have added business to their markets, and not ‘cannibalized’ in any fashion.” The Sundance theater in Dobbs Ferry will be part of a 17-acre mall that is itself controversial: Critics have predicted traffic jams along the Saw Mill River Parkway on a par with the one in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Weekend.” The mall will rise on the parkway’s western edge at the Lawrence Street exit (Exit 16) and near the village of Ardsley. Called Rivertowns Square, it is to include 200 rental apartments and a hotel. Ground is expected to be broken in the coming months, and the Sundance theater is expected to open a year after the groundbreaking. Mayor Peter R. Porcino of Ardsley predicted long backups on the parkway and feeder streets when moviegoing is at its peak, since traffic already backs up at heavily trafficked times at the Lawrence Street exit. “It will be a nightmare, especially on Friday and Saturday nights,” Mr. Porcino said. However, Mayor Hartley Connett of Dobbs Ferry noted that the developers would spend $10 million on traffic-easing enhancements: widening of roadways, dedicated turn lanes, a traffic circle and lighting. Consultants hired by Dobbs Ferry, Mr. Connett said, concluded that the enhancements should prevent gridlock. “I think that it’s fear of the unknown,” he said of the project’s critics. The new mall, he said, will yield hundreds of thousands of dollars in property taxes for Dobbs Ferry and the Ardsley school district, which includes parts of Dobbs Ferry. Doing nothing, he said, is not a choice, since much of the site has lain “abandoned and neglected for 20 years” and will eventually need rebuilding. To block the mall, the Village of Ardsley filed a lawsuit complaining that Dobbs Ferry’s government did not follow required procedures when it approved the project’s site plan in June. But Ardsley officials predict privately that the village may soon settle, because it does not want to spend taxpayers’ money on legal costs when Dobbs Ferry could correct any procedural mistakes and develop the mall anyway. Martin G. Berger, a managing member of the developer, Saber Real Estate Advisors, said Sundance had done a market study and found there were 45 screens in the mall’s consumer base of 600,000 people. Since there are usually about 15 movies available at one time, the same movie is already being shown in several locations. “One will serve northern Westchester, and the other will serve southern Westchester,” he said of the two art houses. An effort has been made to get word to Mr. Redford, said the person familiar with Burns management, that his brand would be supporting “an environmental disaster” and tarnish his reputation as an environmentalist. So far, like the quirky French art house film “The Artist,” Mr. Redford has been silent.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Feb 2014 16:23:11 +0000
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