Just days before Christmas, Clearwater city commissioners started work on what they hope will be their gift to Clearwater residents down the road: a first-run, stadium-seat movie theater inside the city limits.
Much rejoicing would ensue if that happened. The closest first-run theaters for Clearwater residents are in Largo at Tri-City Mall and Largo Mall and in Palm Harbor. But those are older theaters. To see a movie at one of the state-of-the art megaplexes, Clearwater residents must drive 20 to 30 minutes to Oldsmar or Pinellas Park.
Clearwater residents as well as city officials have been a bit embarrassed that they must rely on much-smaller Oldsmar and Pinellas Park to satisfy their movie cravings.
City commissioners have hoped for several years that a movie theater development company would take an interest in Clearwater. They continued to wish for it after city voters declined in 2000 to approve a huge redevelopment plan for downtown that was to include a theater. Commissioners kept on wishing as the city's first-run and even lesser theaters closed one by one, leaving only one small movie cafe.
That's about all they did, however - just wish and talk, with a sigh of frustration now and then because no one was showing up to offer Clearwater moviegoers what they craved.
But before the holidays, Commissioner Frank Hibbard suggested that the city get more aggressive and mount an organized campaign to persuade a theater developer to come to Clearwater. On Dec. 15, sitting as the Community Redevelopment Agency, commissioners voted to advertise for proposals from interested developers and agreed to consider incentives if necessary to attract a theater company. Commissioners said they were willing to meet with developers themselves if necessary to convince them of the city's serious interest.
City officials would like to see a theater built downtown rather than somewhere else in the city, and they may be willing to subsidize the cost of land or parking to persuade a developer to build a multiplex there. Commissioners know from looking at BayWalk in St. Petersburg that a movie theater can help bring a moribund area to life and fill it with people during the day and at night. Clearwater officials are hoping to bring a renaissance to downtown Clearwater with a combination of new residential and retail development, and they believe a movie theater would fit right in. Plus, they note, a theater downtown likely would be patronized by tourists staying in Clearwater Beach and by residents of nearby Dunedin and Belleair.
Their desire to use a theater to spark more development downtown is understandable. However, Clearwater residents probably would be annoyed if commissioners were so intent on wooing a theater developer to downtown that they failed to promote promising sites elsewhere in the city. Clearwater residents just want to be able to go to a movie in a great theater without having to fill up the gas tank for the trip.
Nevertheless, it is good to see city commissioners stop just wishin' and hopin' and instead step out to aggressively recruit a theater company that could fill in this gap in local amenities.
