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Let's not give up on a new movie theater

Bye-bye, movie dreams. Clearwater's lust for a first-run, stadium-seat movie theater will remain unsatisfied, at least for the foreseeable future.

After two years of hype and hope, the city and developer Elias Jafif agreed Tuesday that his plan to build a theater in downtown Clearwater just won't work. The conclusion of this drawn-out drama was a letdown, with both sides merely shrugging and walking away.

Rising costs to build the theater doomed the project. Clearwater had agreed to provide about $9-million to get the theater and associated parking built downtown, but Jafif recently announced that his costs had gone up and he needed a $27-million check from the city to build the theater as part of his Acqua at the Downtown Plaza project. He also wanted the city to back the theater company's lease.

On Tuesday, the Clearwater City Council said no. "As the numbers stand today, we just can't afford it," said Mayor Frank Hibbard.

Jafif and his team didn't seem surprised to get turned down. Jafif still hopes to build a condominium tower and parking on his 4-acre property at the corner of Cleveland Street and Osceola Avenue. He said he might return with new plans for the retail component of his project along Cleveland, now that the theater will not go there.

While some cities have enough slack in their budgets to pay big bucks to lure a private retail project like a movie theater, Clearwater does not. Council members did the right thing by pulling the plug.

However, they learned in discussion with Jafif that the location he had targeted for the movie theater - wedged into and above storefront spaces on Cleveland Street - and resulting design specifications contributed to the snowballing price of the theater project. He told council members that a standalone movie theater, with associated surface parking, can be built for only around $17-million.

If Clearwater is to have a first-run theater in the future, perhaps that is how it will have to be done - not in the downtown retail strip, but on a site located and even prepared for development by the city, in partnership with a developer who can build a big box and lay some asphalt.

With Jafif's theater project dead, the city is free to pursue that idea. To that end, city officials ought to maintain contact with the theater companies that had communicated with Jafif.

Movie fans would say it's worth a try.

[Last modified December 13, 2006, 20:48:30]