In what could be a high-octane shot for movie theaters across SF, District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill hopes to relax the rules around giving liquor licenses to movie theaters, so that more theaters can serve beer and wine.
It seems that San Francisco City Hall’s solution to our post-COVID economic doldrums is to just add alcohol to everything. From boozy night markets and entertainment zones to to-go cocktails and lots of new liquor licenses, we seem to have a pretty one-dimensional strategy to get people out to venues and events. And that’s to make it easier for people to buy alcohol there. Though it seems to be working?
The latest proposal on the booze bandwagon came at Tuesday afternoon’s SF Board of Supervisors meeting, when District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill proposed new rules that would make it much easier for movie theaters to start selling beer and wine at their concessions counters.
“Movie theaters have been threatened by shifting streaming habits, the pandemic, and more,” Sherrill said Tuesday when introducing his legislation. “The theaters who’ve been hit hardest by these tough economic conditions are the small, single-screen historic theaters."
“Serving beer and wine at theaters is good for the bottom line, it’s good for their long-term health and sustainability as businesses,” Sherrill added.
The way things are now, the SF Planning code requires a mandatory “revenue test” for serving alcohol, a revenue test that sees movie theaters the exact same way it sees traditional restaurants. And that revenue test demands that a venue pull a minimum of its 51% of gross sales receipts from the sales of food prepared on site. Sherrill says that criteria is unrealistic for movie theaters.
“Regardless how much we charge for extra butter, no amount of popcorn is going to make 51% of their revenue,” he said Tuesday.
So his new proposal would amend the definition of a movie theater to allow beer and wine sales in a way that the 51% rule would no longer apply.
The Chronicle clearly had word that this proposal coming before Sherrill spoke on Tuesday. And very interestingly, that paper reports that Sherrill’s proposal "was authored as a result of the current bid by billionaire tech investor Neil Mehta to renovate and reopen the Clay Theater." So the whole proposal is clearly a sop to the new tycoon developer who’s buying up a bunch of the Upper Fillmore’s buildings.
That said, Sherrill’s proposal would apply to any movie theater in town, even those outside his District 2. Though the legislation also contains specific exemptions for the Clay Theater (which has been shuttered since before the pandemic), allowing alcohol sales during panel discussions and live performances, something currently not allowed by neighborhood law. That would make the Clay once again an attractive venue for film festivals, who program plenty of panel discussions.
As for the Clay Theatre itself, which we would all love to see open again, the Chronicle had an update in September saying the rebooted theater would feature “feature 4K projection, 35 millimeter film, live events and over 500 screenings a year.” That report adds the Clay would be reborn as a “200-seat, single-screen cinema,” with an expanded concessions area and a bookstore section added on too.
We previously reported that Mehta wants the theater to be an art-house cinema showing new and old movies with an attached restaurant/lounge, along the lines of downtown New York indie cinema Metrograph.
There are a few other exemptions the Clay Theatre would receive in Sherrill’s proposal that would eliminate the amount of red tape and the number of conditional use permits the theater would require to enact Mehta’s plans. So yes, this legislation likely came at the direct behest of billionaire developer Neil Mehta, with his not always completely transparent plans for his real estate splurge in the Upper Fillmore neighborhood.
But any San Franciscan would be thrilled to see the Clay Theatre back open and operating as a movie theater, as it once was since way back in 1913. And quite a few of us would also be thrilled to not only see films there again, but also add a beers or glasses of wine to that experience.
Image: Misato S via Yelp
