New Kid in Town Regency Theater Named Business of the Year

From Tom Bogdanski's vantage point at Sarducci's, there was a 10-year stretch when downtown San Juan Capistrano felt like a ghost town at night.

During that time, the Edwards Franciscan Plaza 5 theater sat vacant just across Verdugo Street, stripped of its big movie screens and popcorn machines.

But when the Regency Theater opened its gold-framed doors there 14 months ago, offering wine tastings, special events and a full waitstaff, Bogdanski got some new competition—and visitors got another reason to stick around.

"Now, people are making a point to come down and spend the evening enjoying dinner and a movie,” he said.

Despite being a newcomer in town, the Regency was named the San Juan Capistrano Chamber of Commerce's 2011 Business of the Year. The chamber narrowed its selection from a list of seven finalists, many of them businesses with deep roots in San Juan Capistrano.

"The theater has added another dimension to the downtown night life,” said chamber CEO Mark Bodenhamer. That stretch of Camino Capistano is traditionally defined by early-to-close restaurants and a honky-tonk where bras hang from the rafters. 

Residents were skeptical the Regency plan would actually happen, but the lights came back on at the theater in May 2010. The Calabasas-based chain had refurbished the building with decor and architectural stylings paying homage to the movie industry of the 1940s, when theater attendance hit an all-time high.

“It’s an amazing transition when compared to the eyesore of a closed theater that used to greet people downtown,” Bodenhamer said. “Now that spot has become a legitimate destination."

The 600-seat cinema houses a VIP auditorium where $16 gets you a black leather chair equipped with a keypad to order draft beers, popcorn shrimp and Kobe steak.

"I've opened theaters before; I've opened them all across the country, but this is the first one I've opened that served beer and wine," said general manager Larry Porricelli. "I haven't had a Pepsi since."

The Regency hasn't been a cure-all. City leaders are to make it more walkable, adding a hotel at Ortega Highway and Camino Real and apartments along Del Obispo Street.

To get things started, the San Juan Capistrano Community Redevelopment agency gave the Regency a $450,000, 10-year, no-interest loan. The agency made a similar investment decades earlier in the neighboring 100-year-old Capistrano Depot, which it retrofitted and sold to a private investor.

has been there now for 25 years. 

opened three weeks ago in the next-door  Franciscan Plaza. Owner Alexis Vickery said it was immediately apparent that being next to a theater would boost her own business.

“Plenty of customers come in before and after seeing a movie,” Vickery said. “We anticipated this happening and the new theater was one of the reasons we fell in love with the location.”

Porricelli, wearing oval-shaped, Harry Potter lookalike glasses,  accepted the Business of the Year award July 14—the same night the final installment of the highest-grossing series in box office history premiered.

Porricelli told the chamber that Regency CEO Lyndon Golin’s goal was to build a business that blended in with the community, rather than stick out like a glitzy new neighbor.

One key was getting involved with local nonprofits. But Porricelli, hailing from New York City, said he felt a bit out of place when it came time to organize the theater's first charity event in July 2010: a dinner and screening of Blazing Saddles, with proceeds going to a charity rodeo for the

But after seeing "those beautiful horses at the Shea Center" and the "touching" reactions of the handicapped children who ride them, "we've worked with every single charity," he said. "You know this town; there is only X amount of people in it, but you have more charities than New York City, and I know because I've met every one of them."

He added, “I’ve been in this business for 40 years and I don’t think I’ve seen a town that works so well together. Everyone seems to share the same causes, which makes San Juan such a nice place to do business.”