Varsity Theatre to reopen

The Varsity Theatre is scheduled to reopen with new owners in late November.

The new Varsity will sell tickets to newly released and classic movies for $3.

The former owner closed the more than 80-year-old Franklin Street theater this summer after declining ticket sales.

Today, new owners will announce their plans for renovation, which include an upgraded lobby and concession area and a children’s birthday party room.

The owners declined requests for an interview until their announcement.

Former owner Bruce Stone, who operated the Varsity for nine years, said lowering prices didn’t work for him, and he doesn’t know how $3 movie tickets will work to sustain the new Varsity.

Stone also stated in a June letter announcing the Varsity’s closing that downtown parking kept people from attending shows.

“I’m not sure what their business plan is,” he said.

The closure of the Varsity was a tangible effect of the failing economy which led to resident and student anxiety about a lost tradition, residents said.

Chapel Hill residents Kunal Chawla and Meredith Norman were walking on Franklin Street and talking about how they missed the Varsity when they looked in the movie poster frame and saw an advertisement for its return.

“I was under the impression it was going to be gone forever,” Chawla said.

After the Varsity Theatre closed in the summer, residents suggested to the Chapel Hill Downtown Parternship that the void remain a cultural space: a subsidized theater or another type of arts venue like the ArtsCenter in Carrboro.

Downtown leaders and a UNC professor researched the possibility of using the Varsity space as a nonprofit theater venue.

Managers of the Lumina theater at Southern Village have said the Varsity’s closing has helped their theater. But the bump in student business could be negated by the reopening.

“Going to the Varsity is part of the student experience,” Norman said. “I wonder how much they’re going to change it.”



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