New Start for the Carmel Theater

The “talkies” are back in Carmel!

One of Putnam’s two motion picture theaters, the Carmel Theater— located at the Shop-Rite Plaza— which shut its doors last month when the theater’s management declared bankruptcy, has reopened.

Wing Biddle, president and CEO of Erstadt-Biddle Properties of Connecticut, which owns and operates the shopping plaza off Route 52 at the Carmel-Kent line, told the Courier his firm had hired Peter Vivian— a man with 40 years of theater experience—as the theater’s new manager to operate the movie house: “Mr. Vivian currently manages theaters in New Jersey, on Long Island, and in Connecticut.”

After taking possession of the theater Biddle said crews came in and cleaned the movie house from “stem to stern. It was filthy, and needed a thorough going-over.”

The theater will feature first-run motion pictures at the time of their release. Biddle also hired a new security company and promised to make the theater a “center for great community entertainment.”

Biddle said the former operator was not paying film companies in a timely fashion: “As a result he was not getting good movies. That’s all different now. Films will be shown the week they are released. First-rate movies will be shown on our eight screens.”

A past criticism of the former theater was that it became a teenage hangout. Biddle said Cinema North, headquartered in Rutland, VT, which leased the theater was an “absentee theater operator. We didn’t have much control over the operation. Now that he is gone, my firm will operate the theater and it’s a new show in town! My staff and I will not permit unruly behavior or allow the theater to become a teen congregating area. We encourage young people to use our facility, but it must be used in a responsible way that shows respect to everyone else watching the movies.”

Biddle has hired additional personnel to provide security inside the theater: “The new theater will become a venture that every resident of Putnam County will be proud of.”

Putnam Legislator Mary Ellen Odell, who represents constituents in the Carmel hamlet area, met with Biddle as well as representatives of Carmel Town government last week to finalize plans for the opening. Odell admitted being “thrilled” that the “theater is back. A movie theater is needed in a community like Carmel, and, run properly, it will become a focal point for the entire area.”

While shopping at the plaza last Thursday, June O’Brien of Carmel said she welcomed the new theater: “As long as the prices are reasonable and the teenagers are kept in check, my husband and I will be frequent movie-goers again.”

Another shopper, Robert Tucker of Patterson, said he would be trying out the new Carmel Theater: “I’d much rather stay close to home to see a movie than having to travel to Connecticut or Westchester. If Mr. Biddle keeps his word and the place is no longer a hangout for kids, it should be a success.”

­— Eric Gross