Having survived a fire, a pandemic and a rapidly changing film industry, Hollis Cinemas owner Bobby Hollis has decided it is time to sell — with the help of a city financing tool created in 2008 but never used until now.
For the past year, Globe-Miami’s only movie theater has been on the verge of closing. Bobby struggled with declining revenue since COVID which shut down theaters across the country. That, combined with the debt he took on to rebuild the theater after the Pioneer fire destroyed the original, single-screen theater he inherited from his father in 1986.
Bobby’s father, Frank Hollis, who had run the Fox Vista Theater in Phoenix in the ‘40’s, moved the family to Globe in 1951 to take over two Fox-owned theaters: The Alden Theater and the Globe Theater. Both were located in downtown Globe.
The Globe Theater was built in 1918. The Alden opened as the Martin Theater in 1919, was bought by Fox in 1925 and became the Fox Alden Theater by 1941.
Both theaters were eventually bought by the Hollis family, who also opened the Apache Drive-In in 1974. The Alden Theater closed and was then torn down in the1970s.
Bobby, who was born in 1961, graduated from high school in Globe. While he was away at college, his father fell ill and he found himself having to choose between staying at school to pursue a law degree or coming home to run the family’s theaters. He finished a management degree and returned to Globe to take over the family business in 1982.
Americans have always loved the movies – the industry peaked at nearly 22,000 theaters a century ago – and at one time owning a theater was a near-guarantee of a successful career. Beginning in the 1990s, blockbusters like Jurassic Park, Independence Day and The Lion King drew crowds to theaters in record numbers and multiplexes and megaplexes with 16 or 24 or even 30 screens became commonplace.
The Hollis Theater was a charming contrast. It seated 648 on the main floor and balcony, and showed just two movies every two weeks, with an early and late showing. Once you’d seen them, you waited until new ones came to town. It was something to look forward to.
“The numbers really never worked,” Bobby said, but between the downtown Globe theater and the Apache Drive-In on Highway 70, they were enough to provide a solid living and raise a family. His upstairs office is still papered with drawings his two children made while playing on the floor when they were small.
In July 2005, a five-alarm fire that started in the Pioneer Hotel next door destroyed both the hotel and the theater.
“I was so mad at the time. It was all gone,” he said. “I second-guessed myself and started thinking I should have stayed in school and become an attorney. I would have retired long ago.”
Instead, he decided to rebuild — and expand into a four-screen mini-multiplex, buying the land the hotel had sat on from the city. He worked with his film buyers, who believed he could make it work, and with Ron Nielsen of the Small Business Development Center.
“I didn’t have a clue how to do it,” Bobby said. “I introduced myself and said I wanted to build back a movie theater, but I know it’s a hard industry to understand.”
Nielsen surprised him: “I used to run movie theaters.” Together they produced a business plan Hollis describes as about a foot thick. “The numbers worked with four screens.”
The rebuild cost more than $2 million, and it took from 2005 to 2009 to secure financing, rebuild and reopen. Bobby put in nearly half a million dollars of his own money.
When the new theater opened, the community responded, he said, and business was good again. The multiplex was proving to be the right call.
Meanwhile, the Apache Drive-In faced a different problem. Its projectors were state of the art when it opened in 1974, running film shipped on large reels. Now distributors were quickly phasing out film in favor of digital, and with ticket sales dwindling, the roughly $150,000 needed to convert the drive-in’s projector couldn’t be justified.
Bobby closed the drive-in in September 2013.
Recognizing what it had meant to the region, the Globe Miami Times hosted “The Final Salute to the Apache Drive-In” on September 28, 2013 to celebrate its long history and the memories it had given generations of moviegoers. The event drew statewide attention and more than 150 carloads from as far away as Flagstaff and Tucson.
But Bobby’s multiplex success was short-lived. In 2020, COVID-19 struck.
“We were completely shut down for a year,” Bobby said. The mortgage payments didn’t stop. He had his staff sell movie popcorn on the sidewalk during community events — which was less about income than “a community thing,” he said, and a way to give his employees some money.
Hollywood had nearly stopped making movies. Later, the writers’ strike brought another long pause. Suddenly there was little product to distribute to theaters, and streaming took on a new role.
Rustin Thompson’s documentary The Last Picture Shows documented the closure of many small-town theaters across the American West, noting that nearly 5,000 rural movie screens went dark after the pandemic.
“We were all dying,” Bobby said. Even AMC, he noted, had to borrow “a billion, with a B” to stay afloat.
Even as things improved, people were still wary of COVID. His sister Diana was working with him by then, but they cut way back on staff. The studios had changed, too. They were no longer run by theater people, Bobby said, but had merged into conglomerates funded by venture capital and run by corporate managers.
With attendance down and studios taking a larger share of ticket revenue — about 85%, according to Bobby — he was still carrying the 2009 rebuilding debt, along with rising food and insurance costs.
“I used to love this industry,” he said. “But the last ten years have been a drain on that enthusiasm.”
For several years, Bobby had been propping up the business with his own money and had stopped taking a salary. He was trapped in a business he no longer had a passion for.
In 2022, Bobby’s health took an unexpected turn when doctors found a major arterial blockage. Surgery saved his life, and he now has two stents.
Then came the unexpected death of his sister Diana from a heart attack in 2025. The siblings were close and shared the challenges of running the theater. “It took the wind out of my sails.”
Hollis told Assistant City Manager Linda Oddonetto he might have to close the theater because he was making practically nothing.
“Nobody’s going to buy the theater in this shape,” he said. “Little guys can’t make it anymore. Somebody that owns one or two theaters is not going to make it.”
He approached Russell Allen of Allen Theaters, to whom he had sold his Safford theater years earlier. Even at an asking price of half the building’s appraised value, Allen found it too steep. Both men understood the numbers.
“It’s not worth that with the income coming in,” Allen said. “And the projection equipment will need upgrades pretty soon. I just can’t buy it and do the stuff that needs to be done to it.”
And Globe’s situation was not unusual. There are now fewer than 3,000 theaters left nationwide.
That’s when talks with the city produced a solution. Keeping a theater checks several boxes for Globe: sales tax revenue and a quality of life that helps attract a workforce and serve residents.
The theater is central to a successful downdown alive. Theater goers often have dinner before or after the show and it helps make downtown a place to go.
The city turned to the Municipal Property Corporation (MPC), established in 2008 but never used. Fernando Shipley, who was mayor when the city created it, says the theater is the perfect use of an MPC.
Now a solution is in sight. Under a deal expected to be finalized this month, the City of Globe will buy the theater through a MPC and lease it to Allen Theaters, an established regional operator. Hollis will walk away with enough to pay off his loan and the community keeps its theater.
The deal has to be net-zero, Shipley explained: any money the city spends to buy a property must be matched by a buyer and a payment structure that makes the city whole, with payments covering principal, interest and a bit more for the city.
“We agreed to buy the theater from Bobby Hollis for $900,000, which is $300,000 under the current appraisal, so we stepped into this deal with that equity,” Shipley said. “That makes the deal work for them, and we keep our theater with an operator who has a strong reputation for running theaters.”
The contracts are expected to be finalized this month, and Bobby says he doesn’t know what comes next for him. The hardest part, he said, was letting go of something he built with his own hands.
“It’s hard because I built this. I love this building. I put everything I had into it,” he said. “And I don’t want to see somebody take it over who’s not going to be a good steward.”
He found that steward in Russell Allen. The Allen family has been showing movies since 1912, when Frank Allen opened the Allen Opera House in Farmington, New Mexico, and screened the area’s first motion picture. The business has stayed in the family for four generations. Today it’s run by Frank’s great-grandson, Russell, who started out tearing tickets at age 11. Allen Theatres now operates 17 locations across New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona, including the Stargazer 5 in Safford and the Morenci Theatre, both added in 2017.
“Russell takes good care of all his theaters,” said Bobby. He’s hoping that continues in Globe.
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