Reel heroes: Spring Lane Cinemas gets innovative in the face of a changing entertainment landscape

By Gordon Anderson | gordon@rantnc.com
Photos by Ben Brown

Ten months ago, things looked bleak for Jared Campbell and Ben Johnson. The two men had been running Spring Lane Cinemas in Sanford together for a number of years, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Debby — which dumped between five and six inches of rain last August — the physical state of the aging 35,000-square-foot multiplex on the street whose name it bears (already unstable by any measure) had become dire.

“We’d known for a long time that we had a bad roof,” said Johnson, Spring Lane Cinemas’ vice president of operations. “And it just got to a point where it was really falling apart. There were leaks, and there were getting to be issues with electrical safety. We had a meeting with the city inspectors and just mutually decided to shut down for a while for everyone’s safety.”

It was at that point that Spring Lane Cinemas’ parent company, East Coast Entertainment, got on the phone with representatives from Firstrun LLC of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, which owns the building but is otherwise uninvolved in the theater’s operations.

“We thought the landlord would see (the need for repairs),” Johnson said. “But we got told in a nice way that maybe this was the end.”

It was a low point, to be sure. But it wasn’t the end.

Instead, Johnson and Campbell, Spring Lane’s general manager, did what they’ve done in the face of any number of roadblocks, setbacks and other obstacles Sanford’s only movie theater has faced in the last decade and a half — they got busy finding a solution.

The solution at that time came in the form of a GoFundMe campaign — using the online fundraising platform, they offered the public annual passes in exchange for donations of $250, unlimited popcorn passes for $150, and other goodies in exchange for smaller offerings. Campbell and Johnson shared a mix of confidence and trepidation about their plan, but it worked.

Not only did they raise the $5,000 they needed to make the down payment on a new roof, the remaining funds to cover the job outright — some $16,000 more — weren’t far behind, thanks to generosity from the theater’s loyal patrons.

Campbell, Johnston and Spring Lane Cinemas had overcome another hurdle, and the movies played on.

SILVER SCREEN NOSTALGIA

“Toy Story” was Jared Campbell’s first movie experience in a theater. It was 1995, and he was just 4 years old, but he knew he wanted to be involved with movies somehow.

“It literally changed my life,” he said. “I knew that day that it was something I wanted to do, whether that was being a part of them or making them or whatever.”

Campbell recalls having a video camera in his hands from an early age, and he started making his own movies in 2003, which included animation and voiceover work. By 2014 — three years into his job at Spring Lane Cinemas — he finished what he thinks of as his first actual film, and he has hosted the Spring Lane Film Festival for several years running. He has a personal collection of some 5,000 titles, and as such, boasts a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of both the industry and the art form.

That knowledge has been instrumental in thinking outside the box when it comes to getting people through Spring Lane’s doors, regardless of whatever challenges the theater faces.

Even operating at 60 percent of its screen capacity (just six of its 10 auditoriums are in use today due to issues with the building), Spring Lane Cinemas has become something of an anomaly in the film world — a place that not only shows first-run movies every night of the week, but also serves as a place where you can see all kinds of things from years past. The theater’s recent showings include “Star Wars,” the “Back To the Future” trilogy, horror classics like “American Werewolf in London,” just plain classics like “Jaws.” “Ghostbusters.” “Aliens.” “Sleepaway Camp.” The list goes on.

For Campbell, it’s about “film preservation,” in his words. For everyone else, it’s an entertainment option you won’t find in many other places, and it comes at an incredibly affordable price — for most of the “Wayback Wednesday” and “Throwback Thursday” films at Spring Lane Cinemas, the cost of admission is purchasing something from the concession stand.

“We don’t just have a theater here, we have a venue,” Campbell said. “And we can do something with it. When I started here in 2011, I always wanted to work my way up to running this place so I could bring those opportunities here.”

Campbell is able to show many of those old films — in their original format on 35 millimeter prints, no less — through a network of fellow film enthusiasts and preservationists. He’s borrowed prints from as far away as London, and even though they’re not always in perfect shape, the audiences still seem to love them.

“There’s nothing better than a print,” he said. “Digital is fine, but you’re also losing a lot of what actually made those films.”

He described a recent screening of James Cameron’s “Aliens” as “looking like it had been scrubbed with steel wool,” but said “the crowd loved it. It almost made it more special.”

During the first six months of showing old movies, the word got out via a lot of grassroots marketing on Campbell’s part — social media posts, word of mouth, talking in person to other movie enthusiasts who are regulars at Spring Lane — but the events have grown into not just staples for the theater, but another revenue stream helping to keep the doors open (movie theaters really don’t make much of their money on ticket sales; it’s concessions that do that).

“The first six months we did Wayback Wednesdays, we brought in about $1,500,” Campbell said. “But we kept doing it. Everybody said it was so important to keep doing it, because it was going to grow. And now we’re regularly selling out two theaters on those Wednesday nights.”

That success has led to the addition of Saturday morning cartoon screenings on weekends, another project Campbell calls “a labor of love.” Not only does he put together a full slate of animated entertainment from the 80s and 90s, he’s even worked in commercials from the time period, creating something of a time machine for people of a certain age.

“It’s easy to forget you’ve forgotten an old commercial,” Johnson said with a laugh. “And seeing kids today react to the movie magic from years ago is just special. I walked in and heard them all gasp during ‘Jaws,’ and it just gave me chill bumps.”

Campbell is even in the process of stocking a room at the cinema that was formerly available to rent for children’s birthday parties with VHS tapes and DVDs from years past, a sort of “little free library” for movies that he hopes to open soon.

“One of my big obstacles is finding the shelves like they used to have in the video store,” he said. “I want this to be a place where people can come get movies, where they can leave movies. Because video stores are gone now, but they were always the best place you could be if you couldn’t be at the theater.”

‘IT’S ALL RIGHT HERE’

When Spring Lane Cinemas opened in 2004, it was a big deal for Sanford.

It had been who-knows-how-long since Sanford residents could watch first-run movies in the city, and the only other option for local movie-goers at the time was Kendale Cinemas — a two-plex on the other side of Sanford that showed movies which had been out for several months at a buck or two a pop (the Wilrik Theater, which is now home to a pawn shop on Carthage Street, was similarly small and had been closed for business since at least the mid 1980s).

Spring Lane, by contrast, offered a whopping 10 screens showing the newest films in a state-of-the-art facility. It wasn’t long before Kendale Cinemas was out of business and Spring Lane was the only movie game in town.

“The excitement around this place and the support was just unmeasurable,” Johnson said. “There was a grand opening, and we had the mayor here and city officials. It was a huge deal. The first movie I ever saw here was ‘Troy.’ My friend who worked here invited me for a midnight screening, and she said, ‘I can see how much you love this place — you need to work here.’ It was such a busy place. People would have to park at the bank (next door), there would be 1,200 to 1,500 people here. It was a fun time to work here.”

Campbell, who was just into his early teens at the time, recalls being a fixture at the theater in those early days — “I was here basically every day,” he said.

Matt Miller is a music teacher at J.R. Ingram Elementary who has lived in Sanford since 1987. Being a movie fan, he remembers Kendale Cinemas somewhat fondly, but what he remembers more is that in those final years before the opening of Spring Lane, he and his wife mostly traveled out of town to see movies.

“Before we had kids, my wife and I would drive to Cary on Sundays and we’d movie hop,” he said. “We’d be up there all day, and we’d catch three or four movies.”

So — just like for Campbell and Johnson, Spring Lane’s opening in 2004 was a big deal for him.

“In those early days, I’d be out of work by 3:30, and I could be at a matinee by 4, and still get home before my wife got off work,” he said, noting that he’s stayed loyal to Spring Lane ever since. “The only time we don’t see movies there is if the movie we want to see isn’t playing there.”

Miller said it’s hard to overstate the significance to any city of having a first-run movie theater.

“It makes it accessible,” he said. “It’s not quite as expensive as it would be in Raleigh or Cary, and if you have kids, you don’t have to haul them 40 minutes up the road just to see a Disney movie. It’s all right here in Sanford.”

But the intense fandom from people like Miller, and the work from people like Campbell and Johnson haven’t been able to stop the progress of national and even international trends in the world of cinema. Those early days following the opening of Spring Lane Cinemas and the surrounding excitement also weren’t far from the start of the streaming age, which did a number on movie theaters everywhere. The National Association of Theatre Owners has reported that movie ticket sales in the U.S. dropped from 1.58 billion in 2002 to 1.24 billion in 2019, and the average number of movie tickets sold per person in the country dropped from 4.2 in 2002 to 3.5 in 2019.

Coupled with a sea change in film release strategy — simply put, the cinema in recent years just hasn’t been guaranteed to be the only place you can see a brand new movie — and a willingness on the part of the movie-going public to stay at home and watch movies new and old alike from the comfort of their couch, theaters like Spring Lane have had to adapt to survive, or in many cases, just to keep their heads above water.

But there were still further issues that exacerbated the challenges Spring Lane Cinemas faced. At some point in the late 2000s or early 2010s, the company was acquired by Frank Cinemas, and in 2019 the theater underwent a series of short-term closures for a variety of reasons — a computer virus stopped operations for a day not long before East Coast Entertainment, the cinema’s founding operator, reacquired the property from Frank. East Coast’s re-acquisition was undoubtedly a good development (“it’s been a huge part of keeping us alive,” Johnson noted), but it was hampered by the fact that the company still paid rent on the building to a landlord based half a country away.

Campbell and Johnson aren’t shy about calling them out — “Our landlord isn’t budging and never will,” Campbell wrote in his fundraising plea in 2024.

“When locals stopped having a say in who controls and influences this building, that’s when a lot of things started going downhill,” Johnson said. “It was a top-of-the-line facility 21 years ago, but gradually things will start failing.”

Those failures included the aforementioned roof leak, as well as breakdowns in heating and cooling systems, signage that’s seen better days, aging carpets and more. These issues haven’t stopped Spring Lane Cinemas from operating, but they have taken four of the theater’s screens offline for the time being.

The COVID pandemic didn’t help either, shuttering Spring Lane’s doors for eight months in 2020. And although there was a glimmer of hope in 2023 — when unpaid taxes forced the building’s owner into a foreclosure auction that appeared for a time to result in its sale to a team of local investors who had big plans for the cinema — Firstrun LLC was able to hang on to the property at the last minute, maintaining the status quo. Campbell and Johnson have kept the doors open and the film rolling through it all.

THE THROWBACKS

Miller is a lot like Campbell and Johnson in his love for movies. He recalls working at the now defunct Movie Max location on Horner Boulevard for a number of years and seeing movies in college that he’d then re-enact with his friends in the parking lot after the credits rolled. So he’s vocal about his enjoyment of the classic films Campbell has put on at Spring Lane, and attends as many as he can.

“I’ve seen (throwback showings) at other theaters, but not to the scale that they do it (at Spring Lane),” he said. “I’ve had some really cool moments this summer — I got to see all of the ‘Star Wars’ movies on the big screen, and it was the first time I’d ever seen the first two like that. When I was really little, I remember wanting to see ‘Ghostbusters,’ but my parents wouldn’t take me because they thought I would be scared. I went to see it (at Spring Lane) a few weeks ago, and I called my parents after that and told them I wasn’t scared at all.”

Miller even took advantage of the opportunity to see “Friday the 13th Part 2” at Spring Lane, despite not being much of a horror fan — something he says he wouldn’t have done at home or elsewhere.

“I’d actually never seen those movies, so I watched the first one at the house, and then watched the second one (at the theater),” he said. “It actually made me go and watch the entire franchise. I would have totally skipped over those (if not for the screenings). But it was a chance to experience those movies. It’s so much better to see movies in the theater, where you really get the experience of what the filmmakers intended.”

‘A CENTER OF JOY’

For all the great feedback Campbell and Johnson get in person — from regulars or from people experiencing a Wayback Wednesday or a Throwback Thursday for the first time — social media anymore plays such a huge part in modern life that that’s where most of the reactions live. And with the loudest and often most negative voices often being the most rewarded by social media’s algorithms, the perception for many is that problems are all Spring Lane Cinemas has. Many aren’t even aware that on a given week you might be able to go catch a classic like “Spaceballs” or a cult classic like “My Bloody Valentine” for the cost of a box of candy.

Campbell and Johnson are both acutely aware of the often unfair reactions from those on social media who don’t see anything positive at Spring Lane.

“It makes me try harder,” Campbell said. “It’s important to me to give people a sense of understanding about why things are the way they are here, but it’s also why we started having conversations about what we could do to keep this place open in the first place. What we can control is giving something that’s going to make you excited to come here. I love this place and I love working here, and if this place closes, then I can’t work here.”

Miller isn’t even affiliated with the theater beyond his repeat patronage, and he had a similar take.

“People are keyboard warriors,” he said. “I don’t think people are being very empathetic when they make comments like that, and they don’t think about how it affects others – the staff, the people who enjoy the movies. I know how hard those
folks work to keep that theater running.”

For Miller, the loss of Spring Lane Cinemas wouldn’t just be personal, it would be a loss for the entire community — one that he notes is only growing.

“A movie theater just seems like something you’ve got to have,” he said. “It’s a center of joy for a lot of people, and it would be awful to lose it. The shining light is that when they had their backs to the wall, Jared asked the community for help, and they responded. It was really cool to see. I think more people love it than hate it. When they were faced with shutting down, they got more than they needed to stay open. So the haters can keep hating, because the community has spoken.”

And both Campbell and Johnson have taken on considerable personal debt in their quest to keep Spring Lane not only open, and not only thriving, but as a movie theater doing things that you’re not likely to find anywhere else. After the brief closure in 2024, they came out of their own pockets to restock the concession area and make sure the employees were paid.

“There are people who’ve decided they don’t like the place and they’re going to go out of their way to make sure everyone hears that negativity,” Johnson said. “But if anybody has a bad experience, we try to make it right. We try to not just earn their business, but also earn their respect.”