New Lyric Theatre - Belmond, Iowa
Belmond is a town of about 2,500 people.
They were inspired by the Emmestburg project. Since they opened, some of the small towns that they catered to have done similar projects.
Their theater is 200 seats on the floor. They have a small balcony area that is not open to the public, just a few seats for over flow and staff.
They are open every night, movies usually run one week and start new on Friday. They run First Run movies, except they may wait a week or two if there is a multi-week requirement to run a movie (Star Wars was asking for 3 weeks, they usually wait until that drops).
Movies usually charge a percentage of the GATE, so you need to track your attendance. Some may require a minimum, and % can range from normal 50%ish to 90% for Lion King.T
hey charge $3 for adults/ $2 for kids- they rent out the theater for $75.
They have a small stage, but it is very rare that it gets used, a few times early on, but they now focus on movies.
They needed to gut the building and replace the ceiling, but they saved the seats in the beginning. They did $200K renovation to start and $100K after for new seats and roof, several years after they raised $80K to go Digital- when they opened they had $20-30K in debt- they started in Feb and had open to show a movie in July.
They have a full time Manager/Cleaner that is paid $10/hr and does the cleaning daily and works 5 nights a week; 2 Assistant Managers that make minimum wage and on projector guy that also does the odd jobs at nights (walk throughs, filling ice, getting supplies, etc.). Concessions are run by Volunteers. Volunteers receive a movie ticket to another night with popcorn and soda.
They had most of their work done with volunteer labor and had various tradesmen donate some time for certain things (one did bathrooms, one did floor, etc.). They had some year-long deals on advertising for business donors. All donors were treated the same, there was not wall of donations or anything like that.