Palace Cinemas' bold plan to build a 14-screen multiplex in central Sydney
Two members of the Palace Cinemas staff, Gina Rubiano and Alex Moir, at the site of the proposed cinema on level three of Central Park shopping centre at Broadway. Photo: Steven Siewert

Palace Cinemas' bold plan to build a 14-screen multiplex in central Sydney

Gary Maddox

The Hoyts Centre. Dendy Martin Place. Village. The Pitt Centre. The Mandolin. Dendy George Street. The Roma. Reading Market City.

The list of cinemas that have closed in central Sydney in recent decades is long, leaving just two with multiple screens – Event Cinemas in George Street and the Dendy Opera Quays.

But the Palace chain is about to change the cinema landscape with a new 14-screen multiplex in Central Park Mall in Broadway.

It’s a bold plan, given the $8 million to $10 million development is just down the road from Hoyts Broadway, a few minutes’ walk from Reading’s failed multiplex at Haymarket, and barely a kilometre from Event’s 16 screens.

There are also two single-screens close by – the IMAX at Darling Harbour and the tiny Golden Age on the Surry Hills fringe.

But the executive chairman of Palace Cinemas, Antonio Zeccola, believes the city is underserviced for cinemas.

“When I go to Berlin, every hundred yards there’s a cinema,” he said from Rome on the way to the Venice Film Festival. “I’ve just been in London and in Leicester Square, there are four or five cinemas, so I don’t see any problems for anyone in us opening nearby.”

Called Palace Central, the new cinema will be on the third floor of the shopping centre.

Its auditoriums are expected to range from 30 to more than 100 seats, and might include three “premium-class” cinemas – the chain’s equivalent of Event’s Gold Class and Hoyts’ Lux experiences.

It will have a bar so patrons can take a drink into the cinema.

Mr Zeccola said the cinema would be aimed at a different market to Hoyts, even if both were likely to screen big Hollywood movies.

“We hope to grow the audience that go the cinema, as we’ve done in other states, rather than taking away from other very well run operations,” he said.

“Our program has a Colombian film, a Spanish film, and an Italian film has just finished. We had La Scala’s Aida [the film of the opera] and we also bring in film festivals – French, Italian, Scandinavian, Latin American, German and others.”

When I go to Berlin, every hundred yards there's a cinema" says Palace Cinemas executive chairman Antonio Zeccola. Photo: Supplied When I go to Berlin, every hundred yards there’s a cinema” says Palace Cinemas executive chairman Antonio Zeccola. Photo: Supplied

Palace is also planning to open a new 10-screen cinema in Double Bay, part of a $77 million redevelopment of a car park on Cross Street, and add four cinemas to the existing four at the Verona in Paddington.

Due to open in the last quarter next year, Palace Central will be opposite University of Technology, Sydney.

“Obviously there will be some students [in the audience] but there are a lot of apartments being built around there and there are a lot of restaurants,” said Mr Zeccola.

“Cinemas are very expensive to build and very expensive to run, so you need to be sure you’ve got the audience to support the expenses.”

Mr Zeccola said the chain’s formula – upmarket films, food and alcohol in quality cinemas – was proving profitable.

“It’s an eclectic offering rather than just the same American blockbusters,” he said. “Palace grew when video was the business that was going to kill cinemas, but people will always want to go out and watch a film.

“As [former Greater Union boss] David Williams told me many years ago, ‘every house has got a kitchen but look at all the restaurants that are opening’.”

While Hoyts did not respond to a request for comment, the industry expects Palace Central will affect trade at Hoyts Broadway.

While the cinema landscape has changed dramatically – especially since the arrival of television in 1956 then the rise of suburban multiplexes in the 1980s and ’90s – central Sydney was once the place to watch movies.

Back in the 1930s it had 22 cinemas, often showing the same movie for months at a time, with another 155 around the suburbs.

The Hoyts’ flagship, the Mayfair in Castlereagh Street, ran The Sound of Music for 32 months from April 1965 – three sessions a day, six days a week.

When South Pacific opened on Boxing Day in 1958, it ran for an extraordinary 39 months.

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