SAGINAW, MI

— Dave Wehner stands behind a half-inch thick display glass with a perfect circle cut through it. A slot is cut in the middle at the bottom.

“Four please,” a man says and extends a $20 bill through the slot.

Wehner takes the bill and records the ticket attendance with a counter.

“Enjoy the show,” he says with a smile.

Wehner opens a crash drawer that hangs crookedly under the counter. He opens a binder and calculates ticket and concession sales for the night. The sales are recorded in pencil. He calls a film distribution company and reports the weekly attendance for the film.

“I’m an accountant at Duro-Last, so it naturally became my responsibility for the theater as well,” Wehner said.

Not much has changed at Court Street Theatre, 1216 Court near Mason in Saginaw, in the 75 years since it was built. It has never been known to accept credit cards. Every movie that has played at the theater has been on celluloid film. It is this very feature that also clouds its future.

But each owner, in some way or another, has experienced challenges. The Court Street Theatre has never been a sure thing.

A childhood dream



Countless cardboard tubes are piled in the corner of the small ticket office. They contain movie posters for films from the past 10 years.

Wehner has been the owner of Court Street Theatre since he purchased it in April 2000 with his two brothers. Today, he and his wife are the listed owners, and Wehner operates the theater with a couple employees.

The discount theater is a single-screen facility with 433 seats.

Discount theaters are also known as dollar theaters, dollar movies or second-run theaters, known for showing films at a lower cost than first-run multiplexes. Second-run films are carried at theaters like Court Street after a few weeks in first-run theaters, which today are chain theaters with up to 10 or more screens.

Smaller theaters like Court Street Theater are built on nostalgia. M

oviegoer Clarence Osborne watched "Gravity" on Dec. 18 with his wife, Gina.

"I've been coming to this theater since I was a kid," Osborne said. "I remember as a kid coming to this theater, I watched '2001: A Space Odyssey.' It's a great place to watch a movie."

Wehner, 54, grew up pedaling his bicycle past the Court Street Theatre while working a paper route for The Saginaw News. He lived 10 blocks away on Bates and Williams. Today, he lives near Cass and Porter.

“I had a deal with the owner,” Wehner said. “I would give him a paper if he let me sit in on a movie. So I used to see a free movie once a week.”

The idea of owning a theater crept in Wehner’s mind over the years.

“I kind of always wanted to own a theater,” Wehner said. “I’ve always loved movies.”

The Court Street Theatre is a hands-on business for Wehner. Besides taking money for admission, he changes the marquee lettering himself using an 8-foot ladder. He sweeps the floor.

It's the kind of work the previous owners of the theater have done. Since it opened in 1938, it's had at least five owners.

The theater closed for a period of time in 1958 because of "high operating costs." Since the theater's construction, it has sporadically closed as it changed hands.

The theater, when it was built and completed by Frederick Witters in 1938, was called a "beautiful new addition to the ranks of Saginaw neighborhood theaters." The theater was noted in a March 4, 1938, article by The Saginaw News for the upholstery on the theater's seats. They've since been changed at least three times.

Today, tickets cost $5, and showtimes are 7 p.m. every night.

Second-run movies bring sporadic audiences throughout the week, and also the year.

From analog to digital

The future of Court Street Theatre depends on what happens next in an about 20-by-8 foot room three stories off the ground.

The projection room is where those celluloid film cannisters shine onto the big screen.

Hollywood is transitioning to distributing films digitally, saving billions of dollars a year by avoiding making thousands of celluloid film prints to rent to theaters like Court Street Theatre. The transition is predicted to conclude by 2015. Instead, a series of files can be stored on servers and downloaded by theaters. Rather than renting the film directly, theaters rent the time they have access to the file.

The digital projection equipment needed to download and show films ranges from $30,000 to $70,000.

This transition makes sense for film distributors. A 35mm feature film can weigh up to 50 pounds. For example, Wehner said when he showed "The Butler" in October, the film came in two shipping boxes, weighing about 25 pounds each. Thousands of prints are made for a single film like "The Butle" and are shipped all over the globe.

Wehner pays a percentage of his ticket sales to the distributor, depending on the film's box office performance during its first run. The more successful a film is during the first run, the higher the percentage Wehner pays to show the film second-run. He's had to pay as much as 50 percent.

If he selects a movie with a high percentage and draws a low attendance, Wehner loses money. That's happened in the past, he said.

While the transition to digital won't lower percentages for renting a film, Wehner would likely save money on renting films. The cost of renting films in the future is likely to decrease because shipping costs will become obsolete.

The Great Lakes Bay Region has seen the good and the bad of the digital transition. The Vassar Theatre completed the transition to digital thanks to money raised through a Kickstarter campaign, while Studio M in Midland shut down after owners decided not to invest in digital projection equipment.

A 2012 theatrical market analysis by the Movie Picture Association of America showed the Court Street Theatre as one of 6,426 analog theaters in the United States. The other 36,377 are digital.

The shift to digital is widely predicted to conclude in 2015.

It's a shift that complicates the future of Court Street Theatre. Wehner has had the Court Street Theatre for sale since 2010.

"I need to start practicing retirement," Wehner said with a smile. "I don't need to work two jobs anymore. I've paid my dues."

The push to market a movie theater

Wehner said he's made his decision to sell. The only thing he has yet to decide is whether he’ll make one last significant investment to install the digital equipment in hopes of selling at a higher price.

Wehner concluded a while back that he spends too much time working. On top of 40 hours a week at Duro-Last, he works another 20 doing various things for the theater. It’s time he’d rather have with his wife and the rest of his family as he edges closer to retirement.

The theater is listed at $99,900, cut by 20 percent from its opening sale price of $150,000 in 2010. Last week, the theater was listed for $20,000 more than the present asking price.

Wehner said the theater was unlisted for a time as he switched realty companies.

Wehner’s real estate agent for selling it is Century 21 Real Estate Agent Kenneth Kujawa.

“Obviously, it’s a challenge,” Kujawa said about selling the theater. “It’s a specialty property.”

No matter the sale price, Wehner said he will not get back his investment. He’s accepted that reality, he said, because he remembers it was his dream to own a theater. It was never about making money.

The difference in running the theater digitally versus analog on a day-to-day business wouldn’t result in many changes. Now, Wehner starts the film by pressing a button in the ticket office. With a digital system, he could start the film by clicking a mouse.

The theater has always been a family-oriented theater, where Wehner occasionally selects a PG-rated film to include children in the movie-going experience. It's a Court Street Theatre tradition he also took part in as a customer, seeing movies as a child.

Saginaw residents acknowledged it as well. A letter to the editor in a December 1969 edition of The Saginaw News expressed gratitude for Court Street Theatre's family-friendly environment.

"It is a welcome relief and also a pleasure that we have one place in the city of Saginaw that presents films suitable for family entertainment — where we can take our children, relax and enjoy our evening," the letter writer said. "Thank you for a job well done; and hoping that you will continue to present such fine, clean, enjoyable entertainment."

Wehner said it's been quite an experience owning the theater and providing families and movie-goers an option for a night out.

“I hope whoever buys it loves it as much as I love it,” Wehner said. “I’d just like to spend more time with my family. It’s time for the next chapter in my life.”