Great Barrington — After securing commitments from investors, Cinema Lab CEO Luke Parker Bowles said that the Montclair, New Jersey-based theater company Cinema Lab is set to purchase the Triplex Theater on 70 Railroad Street.
According to Cinema Lab’s website, the company owns three theaters: The Cañon in Cañon City, Colo.; The Bradley at Bradley Beach, N.J.; and The Village at SOPAC in South Orange, N.J. In November, the company announced that it is buying The Playhouse in New Canaan, Conn.
Previously, Parker Bowles said that Cinema Lab needed to raise $750,000 by December 31 to purchase the property. He subsequently held meetings locally with potential investors. In an interview with The Edge on Thursday, January 12, Parker Bowles said that the meetings have all been successful and he has received enough financial commitments to purchase the theater. “We have all been overwhelmed, and it has been fantastic,” Parker Bowles said. “It is a reflection of how much people want this theater to stay open. We have been involved with investors from surrounding towns that don’t have a movie theaters. The support we have gotten has been truly humbling.”
Parker Bowles said that, as of January 12, he has received commitments from 15 investors. “We are happy to have more, but we want to close this round by January 20,” Parker Bowles said. Parker Bowles said that the purchase of the building will not be official until January 31, and, until then, Cinema Lab is in a holding agreement with current owner Richard Stanley. The South Egremont resident has owned the theater for the past 28 years.
Parker Bowles said that, after the purchase of the building, a renovation project on the theater will start in late February. Parker Bowles detailed the renovation project in a previous interview with The Edge. “To the left of the Triplex building, the storefront will become an independent bar,” Parker Bowles said. “We will knock through the wall [of the building] and it will be renovated. We will renovate the entire building.”
He did not give an estimate of how much the renovation project would cost the company, but that the theater would be closed for a time during the project. “We will try to work around the slow season,” he said. “The goal is that we will be open for the summer, whether in a fully formed phase or not because we don’t want people to miss out on summer movies.”
In his recent interview with The Edge, Parker Bowles said he is very excited to start work on the theater’s renovation project. “We are going to transform it and it will be a huge asset to the Berkshires,” Parker Bowles said. “And it will especially be a huge asset to the Berkshire Film Festival, which will be coming back bigger and better than ever.”
