(Trinidad Express) SEVEN months after the revelation of the first positive Covid-19 case in Trinidad and Tobago, the deadly pandemic has contributed to the closure of a major entertainment centre in Chaguanas.
Business magnate and MovieTowne founder Derek Chin issued a statement yesterday indicating that after a decade in operation the MovieTowne Chaguanas branch will be permanently closed.
MovieTowne Chaguanas has eight cinemas, 1,800 cinema seats and employs 75 people, according to the company’s website.
Chin said the decision to mothball the MovieTowne in Chaguanas stems from the Covid-19 pandemic as well as “difficulty with the landlord’s terms”.
“I wish to inform you that we will be closing our MovieTowne Chaguanas branch for good as the pandemic, along with difficulty with the landlord’s terms, has made it uneconomical for us to continue,” he stated.
Chin cited the uncertainty surrounding the Government’s Covid-19 measures as also being a factor.
“The extended shutdown and the continued uncertainty has made it extremely difficult to continue and, in the interest of keeping our overall business in a survival mode, we felt this was the best alternative for us,” he stated.
Chin stated that MovieTowne’s other locations in Port of Spain, C3 Centre in San Fernando and in Tobago will reopen when the restrictions are relaxed. The MovieTowne at Invaders Bay in Port of Spain has ten movie screens and 2,500 seats and employs 175 people. The cinema complex in the southern city has nine screens and 2,200 seats, while the operations at Lowlands in Tobago has four screens and 800 seats.
“We wish to thank our many Central and Chaguanas patrons for the support over the last ten years,” he stated.
The Covid-19 pandemic has severely impacted T&T’s entertainment and leisure sector.
Some 70 bars have closed down permanently since the onset of the pandemic, the Barkeepers and Operators Association said last week.
Also, dozens of small stores throughout the country have been forced to close their operations as they have been impacted by the severe reduction in foot traffic as a result of the full lockdown in March, April and May and the current partial lockdown, which began on August 17.
Express calculations indicate that MovieTowne’s four cinema complexes have been closed for 154 days of the 213 days since March 12, when the first Covid-19 case was revealed. That’s 72 per cent of the days since March 12.
As a result of the imposition of public health restrictions, the company closed its cinemas on March 17 and reopened them on June 24—99 days. The cinemas were closed again on August 17, following the imposition of the partial lockdown caused by the general election-related spike in positive cases and deaths. Fifty-four days and counting.
Who is MovieTowne’s landlord?
Although MovieTowne founder Derek Chin did not name the landlord of MovieTowne Chaguanas in his statement yesterday, that information is disclosed in last year’s prospectus for the initial public offering of Endeavour Holdings Ltd (EHL).
Both Price Plaza North and South are identified as being owned by EHL, the real estate investment company that was listed on the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) market of the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange (TTSE) on December 12, 2019.
The construction of Price Plaza North was completed in 2010 and it is an expansion of what is officially known as Price Plaza South, completed in 2002, which is dominated by a PriceSmart membership store, a SuperPharm and a Scotiabank branch.
The EHL prospectus, which is dated September 30, 2019, discloses that Price Plaza North is occupied by 21 tenants in the entertainment, food, clothing and specialty retail sectors.
MovieTowne opened in Chaguanas in January 2010 and is identified in the EHL prospectus as one of four anchor tenants of Price Plaza North.
According to the EHL prospectus: “Unlike Price Plaza South, which caters for many smaller retail clients, Price Plaza North is geared towards large anchor tenants who account for 60 per cent of the rentable space. The average lease terms for such tenants range between nine and ten years with rent escalations of between 12 per cent and 15 per cent every three years.”
If the prospectus accurately reflects the reality of the rent escalation at Price Plaza North, the lease charges for MovieTowne Chaguanas would have increased by between 12 and 15 per cent in January 2013, January 2016 and January 2019.
EHL’s investment portfolio comprises nine commercial properties, including Briar Place in St Clair, four SuperPharm stores and Price Plaza North and South.
Those nine properties had a total market value of $831.6 million in valuations conducted by Brent Augustus and Associates in 2014. Price Plaza North and South were jointly valued at $406.5 million.
While the nine properties are owned by EHL, the property and facilities management is conducted by Amera Caribbean Development at a cost of $182,568 per month, or $2,190,816 a year.
The substantial shareholders of EHL are the Rahael family and John and Michael Aboud.
EHL’s audited after-tax profit for the year ended April 30, 2020 was $6.4 million, an 83 per cent decline compared with the $37.9 million the company declared in 2019.
In his chairman’s report, dated September 4, 2020, John Aboud said the decline in the company’s profitability “was primarily due to the negative adjustment of EHL’s property valuations by the sum of $26.2 million,” as a result of fair value adjustments anticipated to result from the Covid-19 pandemic, with the most significant adjustment being made to the Price Plaza Mall.
“Additionally, rental revenue declined by the sum of $4.9 million as rental concessions were given in April 2020 to those tenants in Price Plaza Mall whose businesses were affected as a result of the ‘stay at home’ and lockdown measures imposed by the Government in response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” according to the chairman’s report.
Covid blow for cinemas
The deadly Covid-19 virus has dealt a financial blow to the cinema world since it hit this country in March, forcing all theatres to close.
Cinemas were reopened in June but that was short-lived as they were shut again a few weeks later in August after the number of cases increased.
Cinemas globally are also closing their doors.
A report in the United Kingdom’s Sunday Times last week stated that Regal Cinemas, owner of Cineworld, is closing all of the chain’s locations in the United States as well as its theatres in the UK.
Cineworld operates 128 venues in the UK and Ireland in addition to Regal’s 546 theatres in the US consisting of 7,211 screens.
Regal is the second-largest theatrical chain in the US after AMC, while Cineworld is the UK’s biggest cinema operator.
According to the report, Cineworld reported a loss of a $1.6 billion (in UK currency) in the first half of 2020 in recent days, with “no certainty” as to what impact the pandemic could have in the future.
A BBC report stated that over 5,500 jobs are expected to be affected in the UK.
