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Coolidge Corner Theatre Announces $12.5 Million Expansion

A rendering of the new Centre Street entrance at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. (Courtesy Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP)
A rendering of the new Centre Street entrance at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. (Courtesy Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP)

A beacon of Greater Boston’s independent movie-going scene has unveiled a plan to expand.

On Wednesday, June 16, the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline announced it has reached 85% of its fundraising goal toward a $12.5 million capital expansion campaign. The plan has been in the works for nearly a decade, with leadership taking small steps behind the scenes to ensure that the iconic art house theater “will be around for another 100 years,” according to Michael Maynard, the nonprofit’s board chair, who has also headed up the project.

To stay afloat well into the future, Maynard says the theater needs to increase its potential for revenue and also enhance its guest experience all while retaining the 1933 cinema’s art deco features and overall feel. The plan, designed by architects Howëler + Yoon, moves the theater’s main entrance to the Centre Street parking lot at the back of the building. There, patrons will step into a glass-walled lobby to purchase tickets and wait in line indoors or outside under a cantilevered overhang. (Gone are the days of rainy lines that snake around the building. But another quirk, the red curtains that open before movies, will stay, assures Maynard.)

Up an expanded second story and a new third story will be two new theaters, one that seats 150 and another that seats 57. The expansion raises the total number of screening rooms to six and total number of Coolidge seats from 729 to over 900. Maynard explains that the additional screens allow the Coolidge to offer more first-run titles and to be flexible with existing space.

A rendering illustrating a section perspective of the Coolidge Corner Theatre expansion. (Courtesy Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP)
A rendering illustrating a section perspective of the Coolidge Corner Theatre expansion. (Courtesy Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP)

The expansion will offer remedies to ongoing challenges. For example, right now the board books rooms at nearby hotels or schools to accommodate meetings for its 25 or so members. A top-floor educational room, which can be converted for receptions and will have an adjacent catering kitchen and roof deck, is also part of the plan, along with a media library that will house the Jay Carr collection, in tribute to the late film critic.

“It would be a wonderful place for a wedding,” observes Maynard. In December 2019, Brookline native Lee Loechler animated himself into a clip of “Sleeping Beauty,” booked the Coolidge’s small screening room, and popped the question to his high school sweetheart. A video of the surprise proposal went viral just a few months before the pandemic shut the theater down.

Ticket sales and concessions typically account for about 75% of the Coolidge’s total annual income. Without that income during the pandemic, executive director Katherine Tallman says the theater had to make tough choices, including furloughing staff. She compares the experience to “rowing a leaky boat on high waves.”

Yet, the outpouring of donations from the community helped both the bottom line and eased some emotional hardship. She describes unexpectedly opening a $50,000 check from a donor with a note that said, “You’re going to need this,” as being equally touching to receiving a piece of yellow paper with a $5 dollar bill taped to it. While closed, interior spaces were freshened up with new carpeting, paint, some new seating and a military grade air filtration system.

A rendering of a community room at Coolidge Corner Theatre. (Courtesy Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP)
A rendering of a community room at Coolidge Corner Theatre. (Courtesy Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP)

Coolidge leadership also used that time to push the expansion project along its many necessary steps of approvals and permits, which Maynard says he anticipates will be in place for a groundbreaking in mid-July. From there, Maynard says the plan is to erect steel in September in order to be “weather tight for the winter.” If all stays on schedule, the theater will remain open without interruption and the expansion will be complete by late next summer. “We are trying to sequence everything so we can work nonstop,” he says.

The pandemic may not have changed the project’s architectural plans, “but it somewhat changed our financing,” says Maynard. Escalating construction costs have required the capital campaign team to get new construction bids several times. “Between last September and when we finally locked down pricing a month ago, the exact same set of plans increased the budget by $1.6 million,” he says, calling the 20% increase “enough to choke a horse.” Groom Construction out of Salem is set to take on the project.

In addition to raising funds toward structural changes, the nonprofit received a $1 million donation earmarked as an endowment. It has grown to $1.4 million in the last three years, according to Tallman.

A rendering of the view of the roof deck at Coolidge Corner Theatre. (Courtesy Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP)
A rendering of the view of the roof deck at Coolidge Corner Theatre. (Courtesy Höweler + Yoon Architecture, LLP)

When not helping with pro bono causes like the Coolidge, Maynard works as a real estate developer. He was a film minor at Dartmouth and says the Coolidge is an especially good fit because he’s “always loved the movies.”

He compares helming this campaign to a train ride. “Once it starts, you got to get to the end. You can’t stop halfway through and say, ‘I’m tired.’ I knew a number of years ago, I’d be very engaged until it was done.”

Tallman says she’s particularly excited to have a lobby, and an education center. When she looks toward the finish line she says, “It’s a reward to the community that’s always been there for us.”

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Erin Trahan Film Writer
Erin Trahan writes about film for WBUR.

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