Rift means AMC Entertainment will stop running Mainstreet 6 theater

More than three years after opening the Mainstreet 6 theater in downtown Kansas City’s Power & Light District, AMC Entertainment Inc. says it will cease its operating role there on Wednesday.
CEO Gerry Lopez said Monday that management will be turned over entirely to The Cordish Co., which has co-operated the theater with AMC. Cordish, which developed the Power & Light District, also will take over full management of The Midland Theatre, which was included in the same joint venture.
Lopez said the split followed 13 months of fruitless negotiations between the two partners about how to make the theater profitable.
“When you’re talking just six screens, there’s just not enough oxygen in that fishbowl for all the fishes to live,” Lopez said. “It was a very difficult environment for two large companies to operate at the same time.”
The Mainstreet, located at 14th and Main streets, reopened in 2009 after a $25 million renovation of the former Empire Theatre. The theater has three auditoriums featuring Cinema Suites, an upscale in-theater dining and entertainment option; three traditional auditoriums; and The Marquee Bar & Grill.
Lopez said that although the movie side of the business typically broke even or made a small profit, the lounge and food service continued to lose money. That led to attempts to reduce the theater’s expenses through such measures as less maintenance, staffing and security, he said.
“We’ve got certain standards we want to maintain in the way we run the building,” he said. “When the operation comes under financial stress, we’re not apt to cut those corners. To say it politely, other folks have different points of view.”
At one point, AMC offered to split the difference, giving Cordish the profitable Midland in return for handing over full operation of the Mainstreet, Lopez said. But he said that offer was rebuffed.
AMC will receive an undisclosed amount of cash — Lopez called it a “two-comma number” — representing its unpaid split of the joint venture’s profits.
The theater’s future is uncertain. Early this month, a Texas-based movie theater operator, Alamo Drafthouse, said it was taking over the theater but didn’t offer many details.
Lopez said AMC has not been provided any of those details, either.
The theater’s managers and employees are being given the opportunity to apply at other AMC theaters in the Kansas City area, spokeswoman Sun Dee Larson said.
AMC is moving its Downtown headquarters to Leawood next year, meaning its exit from Mainstreet could leave the company without a connection to downtown Kansas City, where its roots have been since the 1920s. But Lopez left open the possibility of opening another theater in Downtown at some point.
“I have no pretense as to what the future may hold,” he said.