By this time next year, we’ll all be sitting in the dark together, watching independent films at a restored historic location downtown, munching on locally made goodies and patting wallets unravaged by bloated multiplex prices. Is this some post-Thanksgiving, tryptophan-induced hallucination on my part? No, it’s what we all have to look forward to when downtown’s Crescent Theater is finished sometime in 2007.
I talked to Max Morey, the project manager for the Crescent Theater and many other downtown projects, and his enthusiasm for the great stuff happening downtown is infectious. Restoring what was built as a stage theater in 1885 at 208 Dauphin Street between Joachim and Conception is the latest in a string of downtown projects that have won Morey and the company in which he is a partner, J.S.M.M/Lofts, accolades and awards.
Together with business partner John Switzer, architect Linda Snapp of Clarke, Gear and Latham, and maverick office manager Josie Boatman, Morey is taking the historic building and developing it into a three storey building with the theater on the first floor and two 3,300 square foot residential lofts above that.
The Crescent Theater will be an art house theater, an attraction which most cities comparable to Mobile boast but which has eluded our Port City, until now. The single screen Crescent Theater will show independent and lesser known films, along the lines of last year’s “March of the Penguins,” “Transamerica” or “Brokeback Mountain.” So maybe we can see smaller films in the months before they are nominated for Academy Awards, when it suddenly becomes profitable to show them. The Crescent Theater will be set up for 35 millimeter and digital films.
There will also be family matinees on weekend afternoons and, best of all, cartoons before the features! It should be a welcome respite from the monotonous multiplex fare served up uniformly all over town. Even the concessions will be unique and moderately priced, with locally-made food or maybe even microwaves to make your own popcorn. Those are just some of the ways that a visit to the Crescent Theater will be in every way an experience distinct from what we are used to, and hopefully quite refreshing.
Morey, whose company was one of the sponsors of the short film festival at November’s Arts Alive! festival, is a film lover and supporter who looks forward to finding more opportunities to promote film locally, especially in his unique new venue. “We’re not in (the Crescent Theater) for the money,” stated Morey and he truly seems to see this endeavor as something special for Mobile, a locally owned operation filling a void in independent cinema. It’s the Lagniappe of movie theaters, something extra for Mobile to be sure.
If this premise excites you as it does me, why not go all the way and snap up one of the luxury lofts going up above the theater? Lucky loft dwellers can boast of either a private balcony on the second floor or a private terrace in the penthouse, as well as off-street parking. Whatever movie is showing downstairs will be available to be (optionally, of course) piped in to the two residences nightly.
If yours is the kind of swanky holiday wish list that includes real estate, Max Morey would be happy to take your call at 251-751-7667. Sounds like the perfect gift for a film critic. The rest of us will have to wait until the Crescent Theater opens next in 2007. I will keep you updated on the opening, because it sounds like they will be showing my kind of movies and I can’t wait to check it out.
Contact Asia Frey at afrey@lagniappemobile.com.
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