Movie house to reopen as luxury cinema
Christchurch’s oldest movie theatre, the Hollywood in Sumner, will be refurbished and reopened as part of the luxury Silky Otter chain.
Previous owner Lang Masters, now aged 91, auctioned off the cinema in February. Masters had owned the business since 1962, and the property since 2015.
New owners Hamish and Karen Doig paid Lang $1.73 million for the theatre building and business, along with a cafe next door which is leased out and operates as Coffee Culture.
Both the Doigs and Masters live in the Sumner area. Hamish Doig is a property investor and owns commercial real estate firm Colliers in Christchurch.
Doig originally said they would demolish the 84-year-old cinema and rebuild it with apartments above, but now says they can retain the existing building.
They will lease the reopened cinema to Kiwi-owned chain Silky Otter. The chain already has an eight-screen theatre in the Christchurch suburb of Wigram, plus others in Nelson and Auckland.
The old theatre had three screens and more than 300 seats. The remodelled version will still have three screens, with 48 recliner seats each and a food and drink service plus a bar upstairs. Work is due to start soon and be finished by about October next year.
Doig said the couple bought the cinema to keep it as an asset for the seaside suburb. It will be known as Silky Otter Hollywood as a tribute to Masters, he said. He said they would do a major renovation and refurbishment. They had commissioned a design by architects MAP and were ‘‘much happier’’ now that it was to be saved, he said.