Desert Sky 6 Cinema manager Margie Bakker said a moviegoer is currently creating a pattern to reupholster some seats at the theater, but owner Tom Becker fears the theater will soon close.
The box office at Desert Sky now serves as a storage area for new countertops that may never be installed. Manager Margie Bakker also stores promotional cups in the office that couldn't be sold during COVID.
Desert Sky 6 Cinema manager Margie Bakker said a moviegoer is currently creating a pattern to reupholster some seats at the theater, but owner Tom Becker fears the theater will soon close.
A GoFundMe set up to help the struggling Desert Sky 6 Cinema in Sahuarita has been abandoned and the owner says he fears the bank will foreclose on the theater by the end of summer.
Tom Becker and his partner, Nick Sanchez, purchased the 24-year-old theater in 2013, when the company Becker worked for began to sell all of the cinemas they owned.
Becker thought of the purchase as his “golden parachute” and said the theater was doing well up until the pandemic. Last year's five-month writers strike in Hollywood didn’t help matters.
“So there's not been a whole lot of product and, quite frankly, the theater is not being supported by the community," Becker said. "We do in a day what we used to do in an hour."
Filing for a Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy a few years back and receiving a $700,000 federal pandemic-related grant has kept them open, but they are not doing well at all, he said.
“It is really bad. There's no other way to describe it except to say it’s a disaster,” he said.
They’ve applied for an employee retention credit grant with the Small Business Association, Becker said.
”As soon as we get those checks, we’ll be able to pay the bank and catch up with our mortgage, if the bank lets us wait that long. We’re negotiating with them, hoping a bank does not want a movie theater,” he said.
Desert Sky 6 Cinema Manager Margie Bakker found someone willing to reupholster damaged theater seats, but it could be a moot issue.
Kim Smith Green Valley News
They’re behind $50,000 on their mortgage, he said.
Over the last 18 months, "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" were the only movies that have drawn good crowds, Becker said. The latest movies, "Ghostbusters" and "Dune," aren’t doing well at all, he said.
Theater manager Margie Bakker said the demographics of Green Valley means a lot of movies doing well in other parts of the country don’t do well here.
“'Mean Girls' knocked it out of the park worldwide. We had nobody here,” she said.
Faith-based movies do well in Green Valley and she tries to book them as much as possible, Bakker said. However, they sometimes cost a lot of money up front to obtain.
For example, it would have cost the theater $13,000 to show "Cabrini" opening week, the life story of Catholic missionary Francesca Cabrini, she said.
If people aren’t staying home to stream movies, they’re going to theaters that offer dinners and drinks, Becker said.
”I think Tucson Spectrum also has the advantage because they have so much around them that we don’t have,” Becker said. “You can go to dinner before or after and we don’t have that at our location.”
Becker said he’d hoped to raise $250,000 through a GoFundMe fundraiser, but raised about $4,000. Had it been successful, they had plans to put in reclining seats and renovate the concession stand and bathrooms.
Bakker said when the donations didn’t pour in, she switched to Plan B. Material was bought with the donations they did receive to reupholster the worst of the 900 or so seats in the theater, and she found a moviegoer willing to do the work.
Countertops and new bathroom fixtures were also purchased and now sit in the theater box office and a storage unit waiting to be installed.
Responding to complaints about the temperature in the theater last summer, Bakker said money was spent replacing air conditioner compressors.
Becker said thanks to the grant, they’d managed to replace all of the theater’s curtains and the sound proofing on the walls last summer, but now all of the other plans have been “abandoned."
The box office at Desert Sky now serves as a storage area for new countertops that may never be installed. Manager Margie Bakker also stores promotional cups in the office that couldn't be sold during COVID.
”We can’t afford it. We barely make payroll and utilities right now,” Becker said.
Walking away immediately would mean laying off a dozen employees and the loss of everything he and his partner have invested, he said.
Asked if they need a huge blockbuster to come out this summer, Becker said, “More like five and then we’d need people to come out for them and not go someplace else.”
He isn’t very hopeful though.
”I think that if we don’t get something turned around by the end of the summer, the bank will foreclose. I don’t think we can hold them off much longer,” he said.
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