Northwood Theatre - Northwood, Iowa
Northwood: Mayor Jane Bloomingdale and board member Tanna Moretz
Northwood is a community of about 2,000 people.
They have a 125 seat theater with no balcony.
They show movies every night at 7:00 PM and Sunday at 4:00 PM.
They normally show movies in the 1st to 3rd week of release (depending on movie and studio costs).
They have a manager that is paid $14/hr part time and 2 assistants that they pay $9/hr (they pay well for quality in PT employees).
Volunteers sign up to run concessions and take tickets (for free movie viewing).
The theater pays the Non-profit $1,000/month for rent to go to capital expenditures.
They almost exclusively use it for movies, except for Christmas movie theater rental.
Price is $4 for adults and $3 for students. Specials 2 fRr night, free popcorn night, popcorn for canned goods night.
The project took 2 years.
They did a floor to ceiling gut of the building.
Project was $500K, funded from grants and fund raisers (got a lot of casino grant money).
They had a lot of community support, and the city donated some money to the project.
Advice: Do it right and not cheap-- get the better seats and people will come back. It is okay to makes some money, you will always need it.