COMMENTARY
Bruce Andriatch: The Palace is home to an ageless dream
As a kid growing up in South Buffalo, Jay Ruof was immersed in movies. He wanted to watch them, show them, collect them, even make his own someday. He never made it big in Hollywood. But he’s a big hit in Hamburg, which is just fine with him.
Ruof recently celebrated the first anniversary of his newest foray into film, the purchase of the 83-year-old Palace Theatre on Buffalo Street in Hamburg, one of the few remaining movie houses in Western New York that predates the era of the talkie.
He is continuing to refurbish the 600- seat theater and turn it into a moneymaking business, no small trick in an economy that could one day inspire a generation of horror films. But so far, so good.
Ruof exudes a combination of pride at what he has accomplished and apprehension at what lies ahead as he looks around his theater. He grumbles about the garbage that is left on the floor from the last show and then stops to push on some of the red seats that don’t open and close like they should.
“We need to fix these,” he says, sounding like a proud homeowner with a growing to-do list.
The fact that Ruof owns the theater at all is a combination of good luck and good timing.
His wife came to the Palace to see a movie with her sisters in 1993 and saw a “Help Wanted” sign in the window. The theater was looking for a part-time projectionist. Ruof had a video production company at the time and jumped at the chance to spend more time at the movies. Almost immediately, he began dreaming of owning a theater just like this someday.
A few years later, the theater in Angola, which had been closed for a few years, was for sale, but the circumstances weren’t right. “That kind of planted the seed of possibility,” he said.
There are not a lot of theaters in Western New York like the Palace— free-standing, single-screen, marquee-above, “Main Street” movie houses—but there are more than you might think. Of the handful that are left, several are located in the Southtowns: in Angola, East Aurora, Springville and Hamburg.
Ruof came to think of them like prime beachfront cottages, properties that are not so much sold as passed down to family members. So he started to let go of his dream.
Then, a couple of years ago, Ruof was housing his video production business in the building that is home to the Palace. The owners told him they would be willing to sell the building and the theater to him. Ruof’s offer was accepted, and the boy with celluloid running through his veins became a theater owner.
He knows that this business did not exactly give him a license to print money, not with every economic indicator pointing down and not with a multiplex 10 minutes away at the McKinley Mall. So Ruof is adapting. He mixes in first-run movies such as “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” with Hitchcock films. He has added midnight shows and Wednesday matinees. And his prices are about half what you would pay at most multiplexes.
“We’re trying to be the kind of place where [people say], ‘At least we can go there,’ without giving the impression of being cheap,” he said.
Is it working?
“We’re covering our bills,” he said. “. . . Now that we have a year under our belt, we have something, we can analyze to see what we can adjust.”
Ruof might not be getting rich, but he is living out his childhood fantasy.
He also might be getting what every good movie deserves: a happy ending.
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