Running a cinema single-plex

Running into someone you know at the Columbia City Cinema is a given.

I see neighbors walking up the stairs from the entrance to the ticket stand or scooping popcorn into brown sandwich bags.

It's a scrappy operation run by a regular guy in a North Face jacket and old brown shoes.

Paul Doyle owned the Grand Illusion in the University District for a couple of decades. He said his old place is an urban movie house. Columbia City is a small-town theater.

It doesn't draw people from across town, just locals. It's homey but financially dicey.

Friday night, "Ghost Rider" opened at the cinema, but only 13 customers showed up.

I felt a little guilty talking to him about it because I was one of the people who didn't come.

Seattle and its suburbs are rife with cineplexes. But the Columbia City is one of only two neighborhood theaters that show first-run movies. The Majestic Bay in Ballard is the other.

There are a couple of important differences. The Columbia City Cinema, which opened in 2004, was started from scratch without a deep-pockets backer.

It was just chance that turned an old Masonic temple into a theater.

Doyle was driving through Columbia City when he spotted the temple and started thinking how nice it would be to turn it into a movie house. He was temporarily out of the movie business. Tight money had forced him to give up the Grand Illusion and a subsequent theater he ran in Tacoma.

Doyle was in his 50s and not inclined to start another career when he first eyed the building. So he launched into another theater project.

Doyle really likes movies. (He got into film when he worked at the Harvard Exit while still in college.)

It's also a job, something he prefers over writing ad copy, which is what he does when he isn't running a theater.

He nearly wore out his credit cards in getting the Columbia City Cinema going, but people in the community and developers with an interest in the neighborhood pitched in to get the project started.

Doyle can get first-run movies for his theater because there is not another theater within five miles of his; no big chains to shut him out.

Cash flow depends on which movie he can land. He'd like to have three screens eventually. More people would come out because odds would be better there'd be something they want to see.

And he recently started Cinema Friends, supporters whose membership fees help smooth out the waves.

Doyle sends regular reports to about 2,000 people on his e-mail list. Just before Christmas, he wrote that a neighborhood "invader crackhead" snatched a weekend's take of $3,000 and evaded pursuers.

Doyle's finances are still recovering, but he's not letting that sour the experience.

"The community loves that we are here," Doyle said, "and we have a small core that will come to almost anything to support the cinema — except perhaps, 'Ghost Rider.' "

Reach Jerry Large at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.