News

Nov 26, 2023

Park City Film takes an ‘intermission’ to renovate the Jim Santy Auditorium

Entertainment Entertainment | May 18, 2023 [email protected] Park City Film

Entertainment Entertainment | May 18, 2023

[email protected]

Park City Film is taking a three-week intermission during a long-awaited renovation of its screening venue.

The Jim Santy Auditorium at the Park City Library will be closed through June 8 while crews install new seats, paint the floor and hang black-out curtains on the windows, said Park City Film Executive Director Katharine Wang

"We’ve been working on this project for close to five years," she said. "We already have state-of-the-art sound and state-of-the-art projection. So, now, finally, we’ll have state-of-the-art seating."

Installing new seats to improve audience sight lines was the catalyst of the renovation, which costs around $200,000, Wang said.

If you’re like me at five-foot five, when you sit behind a person who is six-feet two, you’re just looking at the back of their head."Katharine Wang, Park City Film executive director

"The seats we have in the theater now were installed in 2003, and they were the second set of seats ever to be in the theater since 1928," she said. "Being in a historic building, the auditorium design was seats that were behind one another for efficiency. And if you’re like me at five-foot five, when you sit behind a person who is six-feet two, you’re just looking at the back of their head or doing the head bob the entire time."

The new configuration will stagger the seats, Wang said.

"So instead of sitting right behind the person in front of you, you will be looking between the seats in front of you," she said. "So, you will have a much better view of the screen. That is important not only for the general experience of watching a movie, but for reading subtitles of foreign-language films (and) open captions for people who are deaf or hearing impaired."

Alternating the width of the new seats will help improve the sight lines, according to Wang.

"Right now we have 21-inch-wide seats, and we will go as wide as 24 inches," she said. "We will lose about 22 seats in the theater as a result of creating the offset. So we’ll go from 446 seats to 424."

The new seats are made of ergonomic foam instead of springs, Wang said.

"So as you sit, the seat becomes more comfortable," she said. "The seat backs are also slightly taller as well to help taller patrons with back fatigue."

To help with accessibility, crews are adding more seating spots for wheelchairs, from four to six, Wang said.

"We did a lot of audience surveys, talked with (the) Sundance (Film Festival) and talked with people in the community who use the space, and asked what would make the theater more comfortable for as many as we can within the restraints of what we could do," she said.

In addition to the wheelchair spots, the seats will include 22 new transfer arms, which are armrests that can be raised to allow people extra space to get into the chairs, Wang said.

"Those seats will be in the center of the theater, the center aisle, the exterior and interior aisles in the back as well," she said. "We are also making sure some of our wider seats are also attached with transfer arms."

The idea to add more transfer arms came from a discussion Park City Film had with the Sundance Film Festival about James Lebrecht, one of the filmmakers of the award-winning 2020 documentary "Crip Camp," Wang said.

The film is about a camp in Woodstock, New York, that helped kick-start the 1977 protest to instigate the regulations outslined in Section 504, of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

During the talks with Sundance, Wang found out that Lebrecht, who has spina bifida, mentioned he wanted to sit in the center of the theater to watch a screening of the film.

"The problem was there were no transfer arms on the seats, but he, being a very agile person, was able to transfer himself to the seat from his wheelchair," she said.

The seats, which were selected in part by the more than 1,000 members of public, who had the opportunity in January to participate in a sit test and cast their ballots, are crafted by Irwin Seating, out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Wang said.

"They are quite mindful and focus a lot on sustainability," she said. "That ranges from the energy that comes into their factories, how they design their fabrics with all-natural fibers and recycling the seats."

Since Park City Film decided to install new seats, the art-film nonprofit decided to repaint the floor to match the walls, add blackout curtains and install sconces in the light fixtures, to improve the audience's experience, Wang said.

"It's like when you renovate your house," she said with a laugh. "Once you start one thing, you begin to look around to see what else you can do."

Renovations are scheduled to be completed on Thursday, June 8, just in time for the weekend screening of Stephen Williams’ "Chevalier," rated PG-13, which runs June 9 through June 11, Wang said.

The film is a docu-drama based on the true story of composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, who rises in the ranks of French society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer.

"We’ll extend our season for three weeks to make up for the time we’re going to be closed," she said. "So people will be able to come check out the space, try out the seats and see some great movies."

The Jim Santy Auditorium renovation wouldn't have been possible without the help of a number of organizations, Wang said.

"We want to thank Summit County Restaurant Tax for providing the seed funding for the project, and we were able to get some funds from Park City Municipal Corp to finish off the project," she said. "The Division of Arts and Museums also helped us pay for the architecture firm, CRSA Architects, who came and did the sight lines study."

Wang also wanted to thank Dave Gustafson, the city's engineering project manager.

"He is a project manager extraordinaire, without whom all of this would not be possible," she said. "He knows how to keep things on budget and on a timeline."

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