I’ve previously talked about movie theaters and what not and how there is something lost in them these days. Well today, I went for a walk in one of the local malls called Hilldale Mall. The Hilldale has always been an interesting town in Madison. It is one of four indoor malls in town, and the most downtown mall in the city.[1. Though I think University Mall will be indoors too after it is rebuilt in the next couple of years and that is downtown on campus so will be closer to the Capitol.] In addition to this downtownness, the mall has always had ritzier stores than the other malls, being the only place in town that you can find a Macy’s.[2. I realize that Macy’s isn’t exactly the ritziest place, but it is much ritzier than the Boston Store or J.C. Penny’s.] Yet the mall has always been rather rundown with a cracked and decrepid facade and parking lot.
Well that was true until recently. The last three years has seen a major redevelopment for Hilldale mall. They have moved out the world famous brat fest from their parking lot every summer in order to tear up their front parking lot and replace it with condos, a parking ramp, and several new stores and restaurants. And they also have forced out some of their older tenants like the China Buffet and Hilldale Theater in favor of some newer places, such as the Sundance Theater.
The Hilldale Theater was one of two solely indpendent theaters in the Madison area (there are a few that play indie flicks in addition to the mainstream stuff but only two that just do indie). The place was old, really old. I think they had two theaters, one of which was huge, probably seating around 150-250 people. I’ve been there a couple of times, but never really enjoyed going. They must have had a deal with the other indie theater because the two theaters rarely overlapped movies, one had 2-3, the other had 4-6 totally unrelated movies. So you pretty much had to go. The insides were run down, they had stale popcorn, and I swear they didn’t even accept credit cards. It was a pretty crappy place and I’m sure this was one reason that the mall wanted to get rid of them. The other is that I think they wanted everything closer and the theater was located out in a corner of the parking lot.
After seeing the construction for the Sundance today, I decided to take a trip to Hilldale’s website to find out more about it, and what else is going on with the mall. What I found out about the theater got me really excited about it. The new theater will have 6 stadium-seated theaters (not the old school style like both of the previous indie theaters), with digital sound, a coffee & sandwhich shop, a bar, a sundance store, and a small art gallery in the entrance that will be open for anyone to come in and look around without buying a ticket. They will also be featuring reserved seating so that you can buy the tickets to your favorite seats, and will be advertising free, though they will be playing clips of sundance channel content which is essentially advertising if you ask me. The whole experience looks something like what I had been thinking of with a previous post, just more indie-centric than I had been thinking. I am very interested to find out how this place is when it comes.
Oh and if anyone who may live in this area is interested, Robert Redford is supposed to make an appearance when they open later this year in March.