Movie house to shut down

By Alicia Korney/Independent Staff Writer

WAKEFIELD - Campus Cinema will close its doors after tonight's movie screenings, but owner Pi Patel said he still hopes shows - whether in the form of dinner theater or art house flicks - eventually return to Columbia Street.

"It breaks my heart to do this," said Patel, who bought the theater in 1998 and added a third screen. "After a while it became a foregone conclusion. I kept hoping the losses would stop but they didn't."

The Wakefield theater already has lost $70,000 through this year, according to Patel, and his three-screen Narragansett Theater in the Pier Marketplace has lost an additional $60,000 to date.

Patel said the trend dates back over the past three years, long before his theaters had to compete with the eight-screen Entertainment Cinemas that opened last summer in South County Commons on Route 1.

"I was losing money before they got here," Patel said. "I've supported the community for three years in a row, investing more than a million dollars. It's not the quality of the product or service - the movies just got overbuilt in South County. There's not enough business to support 14 screens."

Patel said he is formulating a new business plan and may try to bring dinner theater to the building at 17 Columbia St. He closed his Park Cinema in Cranston earlier this year and after receiving a liquor license from the state and Town Council reopened it to dinner theater.

"A similar concept may work here," Patel said. Beyond the installation of a stage and lighting, he said he would need a liquor license from the town of South Kingstown to make the dinner theater realistic financially.

In many ways, Patel's backup plan would be a return to the roots of the location.

First known as Wright's Hall, the barn-style building opened in 1882 and became known as the Wakefield Opera House six years later. The hall was part of the village center that belonged to another time, long before council members and residents grappled with what continued development in South Kingstown would mean to the fate of the small businessman.

In 1978's "A Stroll Through Memory Lane," South County historian Oliver H. Stedman remembered that the theater got its start after the burning of Columbia Hall in the summer of 1882. After a few months of reconstruction, the hall opened to traveling minstrels and stock productions before the birth of "moving pictures.

"Ten, twenty and thirty cents were the prevailing prices, the center of the hall being the thirty cent section where one felt obliged to sit while having an evening out with wife or sweetheart," Stedman recalled.

John W. Miller of Narragansett was the longest owner of the theater, buying the building in 1915 and making plans to rebuild after a serious fire in 1918 as he prepared to head off to France to serve in the Army during World War I. Miller continued to lease out the theater until his death in 1965, when his wife took over, rebuilding after a 1968 fire and continuing to lease the building until her own death in 1979.

John W. Miller Jr. of Narragansett said the family finally sold the sometimes-literal hot spot in 1981. Miller remembered how the hall was used for dancing after the much shorter movies of the early 1930s and said he's not surprised the theater is closing, especially with the competition on Route 1.

"I naturally feel a little nostalgic and sentimental about the whole thing," Miller said. "I just hope something good can come out of this for the public."

Patel said he will continue to operate the Narragansett Theater to see whether the closing of the Wakefield location buoys business. Far from laying blame, Patel said he hopes Entertainment Cinemas sees a stronger business for the community's sake, so people can still enjoy movies in South County.

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