Owner Ravindranath Kotti owns a similar second-run theater in Columbus and decided to expand to the Cincinnati area market. Despite the fact that the mall is mostly vacant, Kotti said the Danbarry had been “doing OK” before it decided to leave after the peak summer season.
Danny Heilbrunn, the president of Danbarry Cinemas, said Danbarry left that location because its lease expired.
No matter what guise the Forest Fair Village/Cincinnati Mall has tried in recent years, nothing has stuck, leaving the space that straddles Fairfield and Forest Park mostly vacant.
Prudential Commercial Real Estate, the new leasing team that took over the mall earlier this year, told the Journal-News its intentions were to turn the struggling mall into a mix of business, recreational and office space.
“Our vision is really to create a work/play environment. There will still be some retail, but we want to create an atmosphere where we have more office space going in there, more recreational-type tenants. There’s a lot of large spaces,” David Mussari, the managing broker at Prudential, told the Journal-News in April. “There’s some (movie) theater space that will probably not be utilized as a theater, because the saturation for first-run theaters is pretty good.”
Kotti said, however, that he does hope to make the location a first-run theater, but one with slightly lower prices.
“We are not going to overcharge, like, $9 or $12. We would be discounted first-run,” he said. “The slogan of the place is affordable family entertainment, so we want to live up to that.”
For now, the theater charges $3 for general admission, according to its website. Tuesdays are bargain days, when the theater charges $1.75. Seniors pay $1.75 on Thursdays only.
Among the improvements planned for the theatre, Kotti said, are to add digital projection to six of the theater’s eight screens. Two of them have already been converted to digital, Kotti said.
The theater opened Oct. 10 and can be reached at 513-671-0537. Its movie information line is 513-671-1872.
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