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Author Topic: Lack of theatre parking Claude S. Ayakawa Film God Posts: 2738 From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 03-12-2004 03:45 PM                        My favorite movie theatre in Honolulu is Pacific's Ward 16 but they are located in a very popular mall and finding a parking space there many times is next to impossible. Right next to the Ward Theatres at the Victoria Ward Centre is a Dave & Busters establishment and a Bose Store is downstairs along with a lot of wonderful places to get something to eat and other trendy shops making the mall a very popular place for young people. My original favorite theatres were the Waikiki Twins before they closed and finding free parking on the streets was also difficult to find so I had to subject myself to first pay $6.00 at the theatre parking structure and get $2.00 credited to my theatre admission. Because I use Honolulu's bus system a lot lately, parking is not a problem but it is when I take friends to see a movie and taking a bus is out of the question. I stated in another post the other day my preference for the Dole Cannery 18 operated by Signature Theatres because it was convinient due to an abundance of covered free parking there. The Dole theatres are not bad but their THX sound system leaves a lot to be desired. Parking was not too bad when the Ward first opened but the theatres have become very popular and I only go there for special pictures that has a great soundtract and visuals. How many of you who operate or work for popular theatres have the same problem as the Ward and what have you done? I actually do not think there is anything that can be done with a parking problem like the Ward Theatres but I just thought I would ask. -Claude  |  IP: Logged Aaron Mehocic Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 804 From: New Castle, PA, USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-12-2004 05:36 PM                     I've never worked in any business where employees or customers were required to park on the street. With that being said, however, the theatre I work for has had parking lot trouble a few years back when an off-track betting facility located in the storefront immediately beside us. We had a very hard time keeping their cars out of our spots. Business suffered hard as well since many people from this town traveled to surrounding cities and much newer multiplexes. Our solution was to add on additional auditoriums and purchased a grassy lot for more parking. Understandably we could do this because of our location in the suburbs. Getting back to your original point, though, it does suck trying to find a spot to park both as an employee and a customer when a theatre is located in a high growth / high activity area. The real hassle was trying to explain to our neighbor's customers that they couldn't park in our spots or they might be towed. I've had 75 year old women cuss at me with more filthier mouths than 15 year old high school freshmen because of parking woes.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-12-2004 06:57 PM                        My theatre is located on "Main Street" and thus we have no parking lot. The building has 5 spaces directly in front of it, which are always filled by the drunks from the bar next door. But, there are two stores across the street (a Napa and a grocery store) with plenty of parking, so it's not bad. ' What's funny to me is, people occasionally bitch about having to walk across the street for the theatre, but they have no problem going to Wal Mart and parking on the other end of their behemoth parking lot. Go figure.  |  IP: Logged Brian Michael Weidemann Expert cat molester Posts: 944 From: Costa Mesa, CA United States Registered: Feb 2004 posted 03-13-2004 01:38 AM                        The Irvine Spectrum complex is a huge outdoor mall, basically, with plenty of restaurant/bars of the Yard House/Dave & Busters type. Since the Edwards 21 opened up in 1995, I can remember the parking situation there has always been bad, Friday/Saturday nights. And not just bad, but putrid, rotten, stinky, and rank. It's all open lot surrounding most of the complex, extending up to the two freeways which cross. Over the years, they kept adding on to the Spectrum, building over existing lot. There's nowhere to build more parking lot, so the parking got less as the reasons to be there got more. They're only NOW building a parking structure, of two eventually to be built. But see, they sectioned off the part of the current lot to do it, making parking even worse. As for employees, everyone in the Spectrum must park in a specially designated section, in the far corner of the lot, where the freeways cross, or (thankfully) in a newly designated off-site lot. Sure there are free-shuttle services, but it's mostly quicker just to foot it and wait at the crosswalks. On weekends, nobody can park in the corner lot (which pointlessly remains empty); we ALL must stuff ourselves in the off-site one. If employees' vehicles are caught in the main, public parking area (there are records kept and "Security" on watch!), we'll get towed after two notices, even during the week, when most of the lot is empty ALL DAY!  |  IP: Logged Carl Martin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1424 From: Oakland, CA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 03-13-2004 02:04 AM                        i sure am glad i work in a downtown theater. we have no lot of our own, but there are 2 within a block's radius. i ride a bike, but there are buses and trains as well. when someone calls for directions, i tell them to get on the train, get off downtown, and walk 2 blocks. if they insist on driving , i usually have to find someone who knows what the highways around here are called. i can't imagine being in some sprawled-out suburb, slave to an automobile. yes, slave, as invention truly is the mother of necessity. many necessities, in fact, as the parking-lot woes described above illustrate. carl  |  IP: Logged Pete Naples Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1565 From: Dunfermline, Scotland Registered: Feb 2001 posted 03-13-2004 03:27 AM                     It's a bit of a nightmare in central Edinburgh or Glasgow, I've only got one service that has any parking to speak of. The rest is a case of stop car as close as you can, or dare (parking attendants / traffic wardens are vicious!), unload, drive to nearest car park, find it's full, spend an hour driving round to find a space, park, then several hours later do it all again in reverse. Lately I've taken to doing all central Edinburgh services starting on a monday, take car in on sunday night, unload, then go by bus or train in the morning, only taking the car in on th last day.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 03-13-2004 07:04 AM                        Car parking was a big problem in both Exeter and York, and in York it's set to get bigger. At Exeter we had a little car park with about five spaces. With a total seating capacity of around 500 between two screens, you can imagine the mieowing and hissing that generated! What made it worse was that shoppers tended to turn up at the crack of dawn, park up, bugger off and return late in the evening, without even having set foot in the cinema. The fire officer wouldn't let us put a barrier on the entrance because it was needed for fire engine access to other buildings via our car park. In the end we had to introduce a system whereby genuine cinema customers were given a ticket to put in their windscreen when they booked their cinema seats, and get a firm of clamping Nazis in to terminate with extreme prejudice any vehicles found without one. It was great fun watching the serial offenders being clamped during the first few weeks of the new regime (by that point, word had got out that there was a free car park in the city centre). But boy did it create a lot of admin hassle just for the sake of five poxy parking spaces. York has no car park whatsoever. To add insult to injury, the City Council (Lib Dem - what a surprise!) are about to massively hike the public car park charges, which are already almost at London levels, and extend the charging period from 6pm to 9pm. There's been an absolute outcry about this (some of it is probably still going on in the York Evening Press), and I fear that it will hit cinema attandance. It will have the effect of adding around £4 to the cost of coming in by car and seeing a film in the 6pm or 8pm slot. And to add insult to injury, the Park and Ride buses finish at 9. In their short-term milk-the-motorist money grabbing crusade (they know that they're going to be Council Tax capped, so they're looking to get money elsewhere) this council really are going to do huge damage to city centre traders: they seem to want a city whose sole evening occupants are binge-drinking teenage yobs who come in by public transport. Darren (if you're reading this) - are you lot worried about this?  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 03-13-2004 09:52 AM                        Our parking is tight sometimes, but not usually a problem. By sheer coincidence, the businesses in our strip-mall all seem to have peak times that don't interfere substantially with each other. We do ask our staff (including us) not to use the parking directly in front of the theatre... that's about it. If we have a major problem, it's keeping people out of the handicapped slots. Of all the shops here, ours seems to get the most handicapped patrons. This has made us somewhat obsessive about keeping those slots available, including an occasional tow. A local deputy stops by now and then to help out. We recently discovered that they can (and do) write tickets for non-placarded vehicles in those spaces (and the unload slots next to them).... $275 bucks! WOW!  |  IP: Logged Aaron Mehocic Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 804 From: New Castle, PA, USA Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-13-2004 11:12 AM                     You know what really burns me about handicap parking are those assholes (mostly employee girlfriend/boyfriends) that will park in the open slots AFTER the last set of shows goes in while waiting for their squeeze to get off the clock. I'm sorry, I don't care if its 3 AM and we've been closed for hours . . . handicap parking means handicap parking!  |  IP: Logged Brent Mahaney Film Handler Posts: 43 From: Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA Registered: Dec 2001 posted 03-13-2004 06:13 PM                    We ran into an interesting parking problem last weekend. Attendence was way up and about 20 of our customers parked a short distance up the road (200 yards) in a bank's parking lot. The bank has recently put up three very small signs that say, "No parking, violators will be towed." So guess what? People got out of their movie at 12:30 in the morning to find that their cars were gone. And guess who got screamed at? We did. In a way, it sort of sucks that something like that happens to your customers. But the bank has every right to do what they want to do with their property. It wasn't a very neighborly thing to do, and it certainly won't help relations between our businesses. But I can see their side of it, I guess...  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 03-13-2004 06:52 PM                        No-one is going to be visiting a bank at 0030 (unless they've come to do the place over, in which case they're not your customers and you don't need to worry about them). I'd hazard a guess that the bank put up that notice to deter non-customers using their lot as a free car park during the working day, and that they're not really worried about who parks there in the evening. They probably outsourced the towing to a company which makes its money through reclaim fees from the owners of removed cars. So of course the tow-ers are going to be watching the place like a hawk in the evenings, especially if word has got around town that the bank's back yard can be used as a free car park.  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 03-13-2004 09:23 PM                        There's quite a flap about that, over in the Seattle area. Some tow company out of Oregon moved an office up here & has been patrolling area businesses & apartment complexes. The State finally put a stop to "predatory tows", partly because blanket authorizations aren't legal here. The tow company is supposed to have a signed authorization for each individual tow. The tow companies in my area are pretty good about that. Among other things, it prevents the kind of problem like the one at that bank.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 03-14-2004 10:19 AM                        We were very open and above board about it at Exeter. The clamping company we got in didn't charge us anything, and provided us with notices to stick up all over the car park. These clearly stated that any vehicle parked there without a ticket displayed in the windscreen would be clamped, and the owner charged £25 for release (and it was those fines they made their money from). No-one who was able to read could fail to understand that only cinema staff and customers were allowed to park. The clampers did patrol the place regularly, but if a persistent offender turned up we could ring them and they would come and clamp the bastard. But as a bank obviously doesn't need its spaces during the evening, I'd seek to do a deal whereby the theatre's customers could use the car park in exchange for (for example), the bank's adverts being shown before certain shows, or something like that.  |  IP: Logged Jim Bedford Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 597 From: Telluride, CO, USA (733 mi. WNW of Rockwall, TX but it seems much, much longer) Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-14-2004 12:04 PM                        I've parked The Nugget Theatre, Telluride, CO, in the same place for the last 20 years that it's been parked in since 1935 and never had a problem. We generally assume that more than 50% of our audience walk to our single screen downtown. Anybody out there have a theatre that most people still walk to?  |  IP: Logged John-Layton Jenkins Film Handler Posts: 15 From: Carrollton, Tx, USA Registered: Dec 2003 posted 03-14-2004 01:51 PM                     Claude, I was in Hawaii this past summer and I did stop by that Pacific's Ward 16 that you were talking about. The parking was extremely horrible, like maybe a hundred or so spaces that I remember. We had to resort to parking in the handicap space, which was legal because my grandmother was with us and we had the tag. I would expect better parking in such a busy spot, but land is scarce in Hawaii.  |  IP: Logged

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