Friday, Dec. 14, 2018 | 2 a.m.
Moctesuma Esparza, film producer and CEO of Maya Cinemas, poses in the lobby of Maya Cinemas North Las Vegas 14, under construction at 2195 Las Vegas Blvd. North, in North Las Vegas, Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018.
In March 1968, thousands of Mexican-American students flooded the streets of Los Angeles, protesting the subpar public education system that persisted in their classrooms. The outcry became known as the East L.A. walkouts, which made their way into national headlines and helped launch the Chicano movement of the ’60s, an equality endeavor for Mexican-Americans.
Protest organizers, dubbed the Eastside 13, were indicted and faced 66 years in prison. The indictments sparked additional protests on the doorsteps of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Justice Department in Washington, and also compelled the American Civil Liberties Union to support the effort. An appeals court later ruled the 13 were exercising their First Amendment rights, and the charges were dropped.
Moctesuma Esparza, 19 at the time, was one of those organizers. He’s now a seasoned entertainment executive known for supporting films centered around the Latin-American experience, and produced Selena, Gettysburg and the HBO film Walkout, which explores the 1968 protests.
Later expanding from film production to distribution, Esparza noticed that while Latinos were consistently among the highest per-capita patrons of cinema, there were few, if any, theaters located in urban areas with high populations of Mexican-Americans.
From this realization, Maya Cinemas was born, with Esparza as CEO. The company develops megaplex movie theaters in lower socio-economic, minority-majority and Latino-dominated communities. In 2003, its first site opened in Salinas, California, and most of Maya Cinemas’ locations—five of the six—are in the Golden State. The only out-of-state expansion is slated for North Las Vegas this month.
Early this year, Esparza spent $7.1 million to buy the site across from North Las Vegas City Hall, and a two-story, 14-screen theater now anchors a new downtown development project. It’s located in Councilman Isaac Barron’s Ward 1; as a child, Barron played in the dirt lot where the theater stands.
• When: Hours pending. Plans call for the theater to soft-open in late December.
North Las Vegas hopes it can benefit from Maya Cinemas’ track record, both culturally and economically. The city has long struggled with revitalizing its downtown, was hit especially hard during the recession and, among Southern Nevada communities, took the longest to recover. For the past decade, many looked into the site where the theater stands, but declined to develop the land.
• More than three-quarters of the U.S./Canadian population, or 263 million people, went to the movies once in 2017.
• Men and women went to theaters at equal rates.
• Per-capita attendance was highest among Latino and Asian audiences.
• In 2017, the U.S./Canada box office was down 2 percent, from $11.4 billion in 2016 to $11.2 billion.
• Movie theaters are still the most popular entertainment option, more than theme parks and all major sports (baseball, basketball, hockey and football) combined.
• In 2017, 43 million frequent moviegoers went to theaters.
Bakersfield, California’s redevelopment plan in the early 2000s had a similar history. The plan for its downtown area required three anchors for entertainment: an ice rink, a swimming pool and a theater. No national chains would commit to the area, however, because of its socioeconomic conditions, according to Maya Cinemas’ economic impact report.
So in 2009, a 16-screen theater opened and now attracts 860,000 visitors annually—more than the swimming pool and the ice rink combined.
As for North Las Vegas, Esparza’s goal with the $75 million center is to help bring high-quality theater entertainment to the area’s large Latino population and encourage other businesses to view the area as a worthy investment.
The development will also include retail and dining spaces.