TROY – Residents criticized Bow Tie Cinemas' plan for 11 movie theaters at 1 Monument Square for being a suburban big box thrown into the middle of the city's Victorian downtown.

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"This box is dumped down in the heart of our city, in the most beautiful part of our city," Doug Bucher of the Historic Review Committee said Tuesday night.

Bow Tie Cinemas and its consultants presented plans for the $22.7 million multiplex theater project to the Historic Review Committee. Planning Commission members listened to the presentation in preparation for their meeting next week. The HRC took comments from the public on the project that would rise at the 1.18 site where City Hall stood until it was knocked down in 2011 to clear the way for development.

Barbara Nelson, former chairwoman of the Planning Commission and head of TAP, echoed Bucher saying she didn't like a big box in the "heart of our downtown."

This is the fourth attempt to redevelop the vacant City Hall site between River Street and the Hudson River at the south end of Riverfront Park. The three previous projects proposed a mix of retail, commercial and residential space.

Vic Christopher, a local restaurateur and entrepreneur, spoke in favor of the movie theaters that would provide family entertainment downtown. The theaters are projected to bring 10,000 patrons to each week, helping to stimulate restaurants and other businesses.

Suggestions were made that the River Street side of the building have retail space in order to make the building fit better into downtown and to connect the southern and northern portions of River Street that are now split by the empty space in the streetscape where City Hall was located.

Larry Novik of Bonacio Construction, which is working with Bow Tie, explained that financially the project was not doable with the addition of commercial space. While the buildings containing Bow Tie Cinemas theaters in Schenectady and Saratoga Springs have upper level office space, Novik said the $11 per square foot rent that could be charged in Troy would not pay for new construction.

Christiano Pereira of CPA Architecture explained the plans for the site. He outlined the 105 parking spaces underneath the theaters, the access from River Street to the park by a stairway with terraces, the design that broke up the building so that it did not present a sheer wall while providing the space necessary for the 11 theaters, the materials to be used to cover the building's exterior, how the theaters are set into the streetscape, and the entrance to the theater.

Joseph Masher, chief operating officer of Bow Tie Cinemas, said the comments made at the meeting would be reviewed.

Bow Tie Cinemas takes its project to the regular monthly meeting of the Planning Commission next week for review. The firm has a proposal for financial support in the form of property, sales and mortgage tax breaks pending before the Troy Industrial Development Authority.

Plans call for construction to begin this fall with the theaters to open in time for the 2018 holiday season.