wheaton plaza evicts montgomery cinema 'n' drafthouse

UPDATE: There's a Facebook group devoted to "saving" the Drafthouse.

The following is an e-mail from Greg Godbout, owner of the Montgomery Cinema 'N' Drafthouse, which opened just two months ago in a shuttered movie theatre (pictured above) at Wheaton Plaza. Godbout says Westfield, which owns the mall, still owes them money from a construction allowance, but nonetheless evicted the venue, which like the original Drafthouse in Arlington offered first- and second-run movies, live comedy, and other events with full table service. He also cites the "anti-small business nature" of Montgomery County's permit process, which also hurt the venue's success.

With great sadness and disappointment, we are forced to close the Montgomery Cinema & Drafthouse. Our family has poured our heart & soul and resources into opening this location, with the hope of providing great entertainment to the Wheaton and Montgomery County community.

In our opinion, we were not prepared for the conduct by Westfield and, in our opinion, the anti-small business nature of Montgomery County's permit process. We simply could not overc ome the excessive costs in money and time that was required to deal with these two overwhelming negative forces. Couple these challenges with a worsening economy and national capital crisis - and the result was a perfect economic storm which was too much to bear.

After being open for 2 1/2 months - Westfield refused to pay the remaining balance on the construction allowance. The bitter irony is that we were evicted by a company that in our opinion owed us more money than we owed them. Our only hope is that Westfield does the right thing and promptly pays the remaining construction allowance (that they failed to release to us) to the builder and contractors who deserve full payment.

More details are to come, but for now our family needs some time to recover and focus on our Arlington location. Arlington will remain open and please join us there for your Drafthouse fun. Best of luck to everyone this holiday season and let's hope next year is better than this year.