PITTSFIELD — Phoenix Theatres has received city approval to convert the former Marketplace Cafe space on North Street into a seventh screen for the Beacon Cinema, with plans to open the new auditorium by Thanksgiving.

The city’s Community Development Board granted the project a special permit Tuesday.

Cory Jacobson, president of Phoenix Theatres and owner of the Kinnell-Kresge building, also shed new light on his decision not to renew the Marketplace's lease, criticizing the business' direction and management before its closure.

The new theater will have 32 seats — about half the capacity of the Beacon's other six auditoriums — and will be accessed through the hallway near the Beacon's bathrooms. Jacobson told The Eagle on Sunday that the screen will be about 25 feet wide and 12 feet tall, making it about 5 feet narrower than the Beacon's other screens. The auditorium will have the same heated reclining seats familiar to Beacon moviegoers.

The Beacon Cinema has been cleared to add a seventh screen in the space formerly occupied by the Marketplace Cafe on North Street in Pittsfield.

The theater will remain open during the work, which is expected to begin in early fall, and Phoenix is aiming to unveil the new screen by Thanksgiving. Jacobson said Phoenix will move the station where employees rip ticket stubs closer to the front entrance, from which customers will then turn left toward the new screen or right toward the existing six screens.

Phoenix sought a special permit because its plans to close off the Marketplace's storefront entrance and erect a wall about 7 feet behind the glass would otherwise violate the city's Downtown Creative District rules, said Michael Valenti, the project's architect.

"Unfortunately, there’s a lot of light coming through the tenant space there," Valenti said. "So we need to block off the actual glass portion of that storefront to prevent light from entering the theater."

“Those 32 seats and the screen it’s attached to represent a lot more flexibility to our business," said Jordan Hohman, Phoenix Theatres vice president of project development.

He said the Beacon has averaged 165,000 annual moviegoers since the pandemic and that the extra screen could boost attendance to 200,000. The Beacon employs about 35 to 40 people each year, and Jacobson said the extra theater may allow the Beacon to hire five more staff members.

The Beacon Cinema has been cleared to add a seventh screen in the space formerly occupied by the Marketplace Cafe on North Street in Pittsfield.

“When you have 60-seat auditoriums, they fill up fast,” Jacobson said.

In a statement, Phoenix, which also operates theaters in Michigan, Ohio, Iowa and Tennessee, said the Beacon has the highest per-seat occupancy of any theater in the company, with each seat occupied more than 40 times each month. Jacobson declined to say how much money the Beacon makes, but said he expects 2026 to be a record year for Phoenix in terms of profit. The company has owned the Beacon since 2018.

Hohman said the new screen will allow the Beacon to better "shuffle the deck" by moving underperforming films into the smaller theater to make room for newer releases.

“We find that we get jammed up pretty quickly when it comes to new movie releases," he said, particularly during holidays. That sometimes forces the Beacon to either forgo some films or debut them late.

Jacobson said the Beacon might also show more niche offerings, including independent films, on the smaller screen.

The meeting also provided more details about Jacobson’s decision not to renew the Marketplace’s lease after the restaurant closed in February. Jacobson had previously said a “new, exciting use” would be coming to the space but did not elaborate at the time.

Jacobson said Marketplace co-owner David Renner had told him before the closure that he wanted to wind down the business and retire. According to Jacobson, Renner discussed having the restaurant’s longtime manager, Shaun Muldowney, take over.

Jacobson said he believed the business had “deteriorated dramatically” after Michelle Moore, Renner’s wife, retired about a year earlier. He also criticized the restaurant’s decision to end dine-in service at 3 p.m. and said he lacked confidence in the proposed management arrangement.

“We weren’t satisfied with that,” Jacobson said at the meeting, saying that he "opted to not go ahead with any kind of lease renewals or anything like that."

“I was definitely not happy that they decided to close the interior restaurant space,” Jacobson told The Eagle. “You can’t sell things when you’re closed.”

He added that he had wanted to add another screen to the Beacon for years.

Muldowney said that Jacobson's remarks were "surprising to hear" as they "don't align" with what he was told about the arrangement, but that it was "pretty cool" to learn about Phoenix's plans for the space.

Hohman said Phoenix was “not confident that there is going to be another operator who is just going to be able to step into” the space and immediately invest in it. He acknowledged, however, that Phoenix did not seek another restaurant or retail tenant.

Muldowney told The Eagle about a week after Marketplace’s Pittsfield location closed that he had been in talks to take over the business, but the deal fell through. He later launched a GoFundMe campaign that has raised more than $8,000 toward opening Stellium Cafe, which he has described as a spiritual successor to Marketplace. Muldowney told The Eagle on Saturday that he had secured a letter of intent for a storefront but declined to disclose its location.

In response to Jacobson's remarks, Marketplace chef Douglas Luf referred The Eagle to Marketplace's original statement regarding its Pittsfield location's closure, in which it thanked its staff and customers, and said Marketplace's owners have no further comment.

Marketplace closed its Sheffield cafe and Great Barrington specialty food shop in April but its Kitchen Table location in Great Barrington remains open.

Jacobson said the Kinnell-Kresge building is otherwise fully leased and that he is pleased with his investment in both the property and the Beacon.

"We're very happy with our business at the Beacon," Jacobson said. "Both on the real estate side and also on the cinema side. ... The Beacon has become a beacon for our company.”

While Marketplace's former Pittsfield storefront will be locked, it won't remain empty. Valenti said it could be used to display movie posters or cinema-related art.

“We don’t want to abandon the actual storefront itself," he said.

Hohman said he hopes the new screen will contribute to downtown's revitalization.

“We want to see that downtown be active,” he said.