Sahuarita theater holding its own against Tucson

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A year after a top-of-the-line Harkins Theatre complex opened at Irvington and Interstate 19, the owners of Desert Sky Cinema in Sahuarita say its customers have remained loyal and that the theater is scheduled for upgrades.

Harkins’ Tucson Spectrum 18 opened in May 2008, and is considered one of the nicest theater complexes in Southern Arizona.

“It’s a brighter and bigger mousetrap,” said Tom Becker, vice president and general manager of Storyteller Theatres in Santa Fe, N.M., owner of Desert Sky. “In the beginning, we took a hit. But we’ve seen that the patrons we’d lost, we’ve gotten back.”

Becker said the largest of the complex’s six theaters will get digital projection with 3-D capability by the end of summer, and that various promotions are helping the company deal with stiff competition and a tough economy.

Storyteller Theatres, which bought Trans-Lux Theatres last year, owns nine complexes with 62 screens in four states. Sahuarita is its only Arizona presence. Desert Sky Cinema has six screens, the largest seating 170 people. The theater, which Becker said opened six to eight years ago, rents all six auditoriums to a church on Sunday morning.

Becker said expansion plans have been slowed by the economy, but that the future could bring a 12- to 14-screen complex within two or three miles of the current site. He said the company would not close the existing theater before another was opened.

“We have some very loyal customers there,” Becker said of the Green Valley-Sahuarita area. “There was a struggle when Harkins came in, but the returns are where they should be for that theater.”

“If we weren’t doing a good job there and we weren’t giving the community what they wanted, they would be going to Harkins, and that’s not happening,” he said.

The theater is working on a classic-movies series to run when winter visitors return in the fall, and plans to allow patrons to vote online for other series they want screened.