STATE OF THE ART; NEW THEATER WILL BE ONE OF NATION'S BIGGEST.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

It's rather fitting that Pacific Theatres had to tear down a drive-in movie theater to build the Winnetka 20.

The 21-year-old drive-in was a dinosaur by the time it closed in 1996, taking up acres of space for only one or two showings a night per screen, weather permitting. The new facility is a $25 million monument to local moviegoers, bigger and shinier than any theater complex in the area.

Its executives hope their new showplace, due to open Friday, is such a hit that it will cut significantly into the customer base of every other theater in the San Fernando, Simi and Santa Clarita valleys, even though the region hardly lacks for movie houses.

Led by AMC Entertainment, chains like Pacific, Edwards and Cineplex Odeon have been putting up shiny new palaces of 15 to 30 screens across the country at a cost of $1 million per screen or more, each with the pledge of being newer, more comfortable, more fun and more hip.

``The San Fernando Valley consistently produces some of the industry's biggest grosses,'' said Chan Wood, Pacific's executive vice president. ``It's worth it for us to build the best possible facility because people now expect a better moviegoing experience.''

The Winnetka 20 features all the state-of-the-art bells and whistles of modern movie-theater design: a colorful art deco entrance, a three-story glass atrium with food court, high-backed love seats, steeper aisles for clear sightlines, wall-to-wall screens and digital sound.

And that's just the icing. Consider:

The theater is by far the biggest in the San Fernando Valley and one of the biggest in the nation with 5,900 seats, including two auditoriums with more than 700 seats each. The facility contains 120,000 square feet.

No theater will have fewer than 200 seats, and all screens will occupy the entire front of the auditorium. ``There won't be any `shooting gallery' theaters,'' Wood said.

The two biggest auditoriums will have screens that are 30 feet high and 70 feet wide, among the biggest in the region. One of the few that's bigger is the legendary Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, with a screen measuring 35 by 86 feet.

The main concession stand is more than 80 feet long and will be the first location ever to sell Pink's Hot Dogs outside Hollywood.

The parking lot has more than 1,200 spaces.

``I think the public demands this new kind of theater,'' Wood said. ``There's no question that you have to have all the amenities now because people are going to sit in the auditoriums for 15 or 20 minutes before the show and they're going to want to feel comfortable. And if they aren't comfortable, then whatever you've spent, you've wasted.''

`Megaplex' is born

The trend has caught on to the extent that it's even created a new word - ``megaplex,'' as opposed to the conventional multiplex.

Pacific's plunge into megaplexing came 1-1/2 years ago when it opened the Beach Cities 16 in Redondo Beach. Neil Haltrecht, vice president of the real estate division at Pacific, said the format has worked better than the industry expected.

``I think the new theaters remove a lot of barriers,'' Haltrecht said. ``People who say they can't get to see the movie they want at 8 and thinking that 10 is too late are finding that now there's a 9 o'clock show or even an 8:30 show if the movie is popular enough. Megaplexes give people fewer excuses to not come.''

The notions of ``more is more'' and ``bigger is better'' have received a boost from unexpected success in two unlikely corners of Southern California - Irvine and Ontario - during the past two years.

In late 1995, Edwards launched a 22-screen theater at the lavish Irvine Spectrum, billed as the nation's largest motion-picture complex in terms of total seats (6,400) and footage (158,000 square feet), along with an Imax 3-D theater. The center is replete with lush furnishings amid lots of marble and murals.

``Going to the Spectrum was meant to be a fairly inexpensive mini-vacation,'' said Simon Perkowitz, head of the architectural firm that designs the Edwards megaplexes.

In December 1996, AMC opened what it billed as the world's largest theater with 30 screens at the massive Ontario Mills outlet center mall. Three months later, Edwards opened a 22-screen megaplex with an Imax giant-screen auditorium across the street, making western San Bernardino County an unlikely but intense combat zone for the hearts of moviegoers.

Exhibitors and studios fretted that AMC and Edwards were in an expensive game of chicken that both would lose. ``Thou shalt not Ontario,'' commanded one worried executive at last year's ShoWest convention, held two weeks before the Edwards megaplex debuted.

The concern was that moviegoers would be confused and unwilling to turn a one-hour shopping trip into a four-hour shopping, eating and moviegoing excursion. Instead, the malls and megaplexes posted numbers that were far better than conventional facilities and helped fuel the notion of ``location-based entertainment'' - the idea that consumers would just as soon spend most of their time in one place instead of driving around to several locales.

``The consumer wants convenience,'' said Kevin Skislock, an entertainment analyst with L.H. Friend, Weinress, Frankson & Presson. ``They want to park, eat, window-shop and go to the movies, so they're going to gravitate to those places, even though we really haven't seen the full potential of location-based entertainment. There's a real synergy of patronage that's very, very powerful.''

Destination: theater

These trends have led to developers and retailers radically rethinking how to attract customers, Perkowitz said. ``People are looking for entertainment and shopping in the same location, so combining those has become not only accepted but even demanded by retailers.''

Movie theaters represent the most important part of that equation. ``The whole concept of the new multiplex with stadium seating, surround sound and love seats has made the moviegoing experience much more enhanced than what it used to be,'' Perkowitz said. ``Additionally, the number of films has increased. And they're more of a visual and audio experience than they used to be.''

In the case of the Winnetka 20, it will be aiming directly at the customer base of a pair of local flagships: Cineplex Odeon's Universal City 18, with its built-in audience from CityWalk; and AMC's 2-year-old Promenade 16 in Woodland Hills, one of the chain's first megaplexes.

The latter will likely be more affected. The Winnetka 20 is 15 miles away from CityWalk but just five from the Promenade, which has been so successful that, to quote baseball great Yogi Berra, ``no one goes there anymore. It's too crowded.''

Wood believes the Promenade, which has about 3,000 seats, or half those of the Winnetka 20, often can't meet moviegoer demand at peak periods.

``AMC's done a great job with the Promenade, but I have friends in Woodland Hills who won't go there because they're afraid they won't get in unless they go an hour early or to a matinee,'' he said. ``They can't get into the parking lot, and they don't want to sit in the first row. So the situation is ripe for exploiting.''

Privately held Pacific, which is into the busiest expansion in its history, has been planning this move for more than a decade. Its executives are betting that moviegoers will be willing to travel far longer than the typical three- to five-mile trip for a top-of-the-line showplace.

``This is not going to be a local theater,'' Wood said. ``I think that people will attend from as far away as Burbank because people in Southern California don't mind driving. They'll drive past theaters to get to the one they want.''

Wood believes Pacific is particularly fortunate in being able to develop a large chunk of property amid a solid, stable, middle-class area. ``There's no other property left like this to develop, and the demographics are great,'' he said.

Close competition

But is there enough market for two megaplexes operating five miles apart in the West Valley? Absolutely, Skislock says. And it's no surprise that Pacific moved in on AMC.

``No matter what the market, you make almost all your profit on Thursday through Sunday, so if an exhibitor notices a rival has a jammed parking lot on those days like the AMC Promenade, they're not going to be alone in that market for long,'' he said. ``It sounds to me like that market can easily support two well-run megaplexes.''

And Pacific isn't done with the Valley. In late July or early August, it plans to open a 10-screen, 2,800-seat complex at the west end of the Northridge Fashion Center, less than a mile from the Winnetka 20.

Should these chains be worried about overbuilding? Not for at least another four or five years, Skislock believes.

``What AMC, Pacific and Edwards are doing is expanding moviegoing,'' he said. ``People are going back to the movies to films like `Star Wars,' `Men in Black' and `Titanic.' And megaplexing is a big part of that.''

The 1997 domestic box office rose 8 percent to $6.4 billion, preliminary figures show. Pessimists cite rising costs to studios and note that half the gain comes from the re-release of the ``Star Wars'' trilogy, but Skislock has a far brighter take.

``The expansion of the business is helping everyone,'' he said. ``More films from the studios mean more hits for the megaplexes. That, in turn, helps studios, because the megaplexes are a fun place to go.''

So the chains are going full speed ahead. Pacific, for example, is adding 15 screens and an entertainment and retail complex at the Cinerama Dome, a 10-screen project in Westwood and a 12-screen expansion in Lakewood.

``It's unprecedented for us to be building like this,'' Wood said. ``We've always built on an as-needed basis, and now we're essentially redoing the whole circuit.''

Perkowitz points out that work is under way on dozens of projects like the Winnetka 20. His firm, Perkowitz & Ruth of Long Beach, recently completed work on movie complexes in Redlands and Boise, Idaho, and is working on entertainment and shopping centers in Westchester, Long Beach and Oklahoma City.

Perkowitz believes the new theaters are starting to fulfill an unmet need for Americans.

``We've always been slightly jealous of Europeans having these historic places where they watch the world go by because we haven't had that, until now,'' he said. ``Movie theaters have become destinations that recognize the common public yearning for gathering places and communal experience.''

ON THE BIG, BIG SCREEN

To start in the spirit of bigness, the Winnetka 20 will show ``Titanic'' in one of its big-screen theaters on its opening weekend, even though the epic will be in its eighth week of release.

``We're going to stress that a big theater like this is definitely the way to see a movie like `Titanic,' '' said Chan Wood, executive vice president of Pacific Theatres.

5,900-seat multiplex opens in Chatsworth

This Friday, the largest multiplex theater in the San Fernando Valley will open. The chart below shows the layout and some of the technology involved:

The Layout:

The multiplex will contain individual theaters of varying size, two of which will accomodate 713 moviegoers (numbers 8 and 10).

Key: 1. -- 20. Theaters

21. Ticket windows

22. Food court

23. Main snack bar

24. Auxilliary snack bars

25. Restrooms

26. Offices

Digital Sound:

The theaters will feature SDDS, Dolby Digital and DTS systems. In DTS, film is marked with a time code (1) which triggers a CD-ROM (2) to play in sync with the movie. The time code can also activate lighting (3) in the theater, creating visual effects for the moviegoer.

Seating:

Theater floors are swept downward towards the screen at a 15 degree angle which allows an unobstructed view to each moviegoer. Seats are plush high-backed with retractable armrests that allow the audience to create double-wide ``love seats.''

CAPTION(S):

Chart, Map

CHART: (Color) 5,900-seat multiplex opens in Chatsworth (see text)

Jon Gerung / Daily News

MAP: HOW TO GET THERE

Dionisio Munoz / Daily News