Argus Online
Final curtain for Festival Cinemas; city looks at landDecember 06, 2001
By Karen Holzmeister
STAFF WRITERHAYWARD — The nine-screen Festival Cinemas is closing, a decision that opens a large chunk of Hesperian Boulevard for new commercial or aviation-related development.
Festival Cinemas, which has leased the Hayward Executive Airport frontage at Hesperian and Golf Course Road for 29 years, plans to close at the end of the year.
That will leave Hayward with just one movie complex, the United Artist Theater on Hesperian near Turner Court.
Mann Theatres and its parent company, WestStar Cinemas, operate about 60 theaters with 400 screens in California and Colorado. City Manager Jesus Armas said the construction of new multi-screen complexes at Bayfair Mall in San Leandro and Union Landing in Union City have “drastically reduced revenues to Mann Theatres.”
The city has agreed to cancel the remaining 231/2 years on the theater’s lease, which brings in $102,148 in annual rent for the 8.1-acre site.
On Monday, Councilman Olden Henson regretted that Hayward, with nearly 150,000 residents, will have only one movie theater.
Armas said the Festival Cinemas’ closure “gives us a unique opportunity to look at something else compatible with existing uses and to enhance Hayward’s economic development.”
The airport is largely camouflaged by commercial development along its Hesperian frontage, dominated by the newly opened Home Depot just south of A Street.
Armas told the City Council airport committee on Monday that the Festival Cinemas site and five other vacant, city-owned Hesperian Boulevard parcels should be studied for potential uses.
Five Bay Area economic and land-use planners have been asked to submit preliminary proposals this week. One company will be selected to evaluate the pros and cons of different types of development, and how the city can make money by developing surplus properties.
Southgate resident Deanna Bogue suggested a business center that could cater to the needs of executives who use the airport. John Kyle, who lives in the Longwood-Winton Grove area just east of the airport, proposed a high-end chain operation, such as a Tony Roma restaurant. He also has circulated a petition for a truck stop on airport land.
The theater was built in 1972 and expanded in 1975 and 1982 to its present 2,800 seats. As recently as 1998, Mann Theatres had talked about expanding the complex to 16 screens and to build another theater in downtown Hayward.
The new studies of the Festival Cinemas property and other sites coincide with preparation of a 20-year airport master plan. Long-term projects mentioned as part of that document include a public terminal building, more hangars, runway identification lights, road improvements, aviation-related development, and commercial and industrial development.
Hayward airport can handle law enforcement aircraft and helicopters, executive aircraft and business transportation, cargo, freight, mail and package cargo, charter service, medical emergency transportation, military planes, recreational flying, search and rescue, tourism and flight training.
The city took over the former Army air field in 1947. The 700-acre airport dwindled in size to its current 521 acres as the city sold land for Kennedy Park on Hesperian Boulevard and the Cabot, Cabot and Forbes Industrial Park off Winton Avenue.
During the 1970s, the airport routinely reported 400,000 annual takeoffs and landings. The numbers began dropping off in the 1990s, in part because of increases in flying expenses and a 1988 aircraft noise ordinance that limited the types of aircraft flying in and out of the airport. In 2000, there were 165,000 takeoffs and landings.
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