Abirami complex is situated in Purasaiwakkam, very nice one, no hassles nice car parking place.
Come May and Chennai will have the world’s first rooftop drive-in theatre cum restaurant. This, first of its kind mall is promoted by Chennai-based Abirami Theatres Private Limited.
This is the ’second first’ for Abirami Theatres. In 1996, Digital Theatre System was first launched in India at Abirami.
This was when theatre owners in the country were reluctant to invest in DTS and movie makers were waiting for theatres to get ready before making movies to suit.
Abirami went for DTS and broke the Catch-22 situation. Today close to 800 theatres in the country are on DTS.
The new mall will have one complete floor of food services, one for shopping and third for entertainment.
Explaining the rationale for this Rs 12 crore (Rs 120 million) venture, S R Ramanathan, the managing director of Abirami Theatres, said: ’’Stand-alone theatres that cater only to entertainment cannot survive today. With cable TV and pirated movie CDs, you need to offer more than movies to woo customers to theatres.’’
He added, ’’We have installed special automobile elevators that will take the viewers to the roof top theatre.’’ This will be an external glass panel elevator attached to the facade of the complex, facing the main road.
The total area of the new complex is around 80, 000 sq ft and the entire property with its present set of theatres is expected to be around 220, 000 sq ft.
The company has already tied up with Planet Yumm for the food court within the new complex. The shopping mall is expected to be given for lease to individual shop owners.
Ramanathan expects the project to breakeven in five years. The project was started in December 2001 and is in its final stages with no cost or time overruns.
Under its current condition, the four theatres in the complex have a seating capacity of around 2, 400. The new mall will house six theatres with a capacity of 1, 800. The management plans to increase the ticket cost marginally from Rs 30 and Rs 40 to Rs 35 and Rs 45, respectively, Ramanathan said.