Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Eric Stevenson loves movies, but he never planned on or thought he’d own a movie theater one day.
However, last week he became the owner of North Pointe Cinemas and he has some ideas of not only how to make the theater sustainable, but also more of a part of the community.
“My dream, ever since I was a kid, was to own a bungee tower and I wanted to open a bungee tower. When I was younger, my brother worked at a bungee tower and as I’ve matured, I’ve just always had the desire to do something fun. So the answer is no, I had no idea I would ever own a movie theater,” Stevenson said in an interview Friday evening, along with Manager Josh Vazquez.
Stevenson, his wife and their six children moved here for Stevenson to work at Maple Leaf Farms, which ended up being a temporary job. At one point in 2024, he wanted to open a trampoline park at the former Marsh building on South Buffalo Street, but that didn’t work out.
“So that idea of entertainment and fun, that’s been in my bones ever since I was a kid,” Stevenson said. “But I’ve been working in corporate America for 15 years or so.”
As for his background, he graduated in organizational psychology, business psychology, statistics and surveys.
After moving here and the job didn’t work out, he started hunting for opportunities.
“We definitely want to stay here. I have six kids. So then when the opportunity came up (to buy the theater), I was actually talking to Nicodemus Cards, he’s a close neighbor of mine, and he mentioned that it was on sale so I just kind of pursued it, thinking that it would be wild and crazy, but when I saw the numbers I saw potential. I saw some community engagement and marketing opportunities. I saw it as a legitimate business,” Stevenson explained.
Bess Joyner, the original owner of North Pointe Cinemas, died in November 2024, Vazquez said. Around that time, the family decided to put things up for sale, he stated.
“It’s been a wild ride. It’s been work,” Stevenson said.
While Stevenson said he doesn’t have the experience yet of operating a movie theater, Vazquez does.
“He makes it all work. Him and his team. He’s been in the industry for 25 years. I was like, ‘This is stupid. I can’t do any of this.’ But once I met him, within 4 minutes, I knew this is a people operation. I know people. I can do the marketing. Josh knows everything about this business, and so that’s kind of been the key there. He knows what he’s doing,” Stevenson said.
Vazquez said he started “slinging popcorn” in Anderson when he was 16 for Goodrich Quality Theatres. At 18, Vazquez became a projection manager. He read all the manuals and learned everything he could about film and projectors. At 20, he was running the theater.
In 2008, they built the Hamilton 16 IMAX in Noblesville, and that became the No. 1 movie theater in Indiana and top 200 in the nation.
After that, Vazquez worked for Goodrich in Lebanon, Ind., and Brownsburg. He then started traveling around to the various theaters for Goodrich. In 2020, Covid happened, Goodrich filed bankruptcy and had to liquidate everything.
The Joyners reached out to Vazquez and offered him the manager position that had become open. He took a chance, uprooted his family and moved to take the job in Warsaw.
“Since then, it has not been an easy journey, trying to get back. We were very fortunate that a good amount of the community understands how important it is to try to maintain having a cinema in Warsaw. Those people come in and buy concessions. They understand that there’s some things we can control, and some things we can’t. The way the contracts are with the studios and everything, concessions are how we pay our kids. So, supporting the concession stand is really the big thing that was able to make it to where we were able to survive,” Vazquez said.
They were able to get the Shuttered Venues Operating Grant, which he said was probably the theater’s saving grace during 2022-24.
The Hollywood writer’s strike caused problems for the theater when it was happening.
“So we’re slowly getting out of that,” Vazquez said.
Water Incident
Back in April, North Pointe Cinemas had a water main break, which caused the business to be closed for a couple weeks.
Showing where the “water incident” happened, Vazquez said, “Right here is where the main line actually coming in broke.” The room where it occurred was being used for storage. “Essentially, this 8-inch main line broke underneath the ground and ended up just shooting up water up into this area. Hit the bottom of the concrete. Hit the vapor barrier and the styrofoam, and then just went to all the walls and just started shooting up. My shift manager described it, when I was on the phone with her, she said it looked like the Titanic.”
A lot of dirt and material were pushed up against the edges of the walls. The floor heaved a little bit. Vazquez said there was a lot of water and it’s crazy how much damage water can do.
“Even with 2,500 gallons of soda on the floor, it still heaved about an inch in this room,” he said.
Stevenson said it’s been fixed and the space is livable, though they still have work to do to that room where the water incident started. The carpet in the building is still to be replaced.
“So the carpet and the walls, we decided, obviously, keeping up our numbers is a big thing for maintaining both people staying, used to going to the movies - since Covid that’s been a big thing we’ve been trying to overcome, is how do we get people back into the movie theatres?” Vazquez said. “Because since Covid, we still, even in year 2026, we get people coming in saying, ‘This is my first time going to a movie since 2015, 2017, 2018.’ Then they get out here and they’re like, ‘I forgot how much this experience is just better than sitting at home on the couch and having to pause the movie every five minutes while one of your kids goes to the bathroom.’”
Stevenson said going to a movie at the theater is an experience.
Wanting people to continue coming out to movies, Vazquez said they’ll catch up to the repairs in August when school is back in session and the work can be completed during the morning hours.
“It was important for us to try to get back open for the community, both because the community was literally calling us every single day, ‘When are you guys opening? When are you open? We don’t want to go anywhere else,’” Vazquez recalled.
Stevenson said there was also a lot of misinformation about the theater being spread, too, as people started noticing the “for sale” signs popping up as well. He said they were three months into the deal of him buying North Pointe Cinemas when the water incident happened.
Vazquez pointed out there also was no fire, despite the rumors. No one died. The theater didn’t close because it was being sold.
Planning Ahead
“The goal has been to, how do we take the cinema in this area to the next level?” Vazquez said. “Both with our customer service, with staying competitive with our pricing and then really just trying to figure out a way to improve that experience, but not at the detriment of keeping the business open and whatnot.”
Stevenson said it seems like the consumer base is the secret to that. “Understanding how much they want, and how much they’re OK with, to make not only a profitable business, but something that feels new and refreshing,” he said.
While Vazquez said they would love to do things like reserved seating and reclining seats, “On the ‘Endgames,’ on the ‘Doomsdays,’ on these big titles where you really need as much capacity as possible ... you lose half your seats when you do recliners.”
The cost used to be $200,000 per auditorium to switch over to recliners, he recalled.
In what’s currently storage space in the theater, Stevenson envisions turning it into a smaller, but high-quality screen with some leather couches. Theater #10 would informally serve food.
“That’s kind of our three-year plan if we can get it. If we have a really successful year, we want to do that,” he said.
Vazquez said it would be like a “micro-plush, higher-end experience with potentially bringing in some more eclectic hot foods, personal service in here, potentially.”
He said they’ve seen a couple places that have done micro-recliner theaters and other stuff so they have a lot of options. “We’ve got extra space where we could take the things out of here,” he said.
Stevenson said his main objective in the next three years is just business as usual. In the end, it’s all about the movie experience.
“Now, if this year turns out what I hope it will be, and what my projections say, then, yeah, I would hope that within the next year or two we’d be doing membership programs and the Premium (Large Format) experience,” he said.
The PLF would be equivalent to an IMAX theater.
“If everything goes as planned, within the next three years, I’m hoping to have either one or both of those in place,” Stevenson said, referring to the micro-theater and the PLF experience. “Frankly, I don’t know how much of a pipe dream that is because the numbers aren’t as generous as I was hoping they would be originally. We have higher interest rates and the land is worth more, and who knows?”
He said they want to put in more arcade games and give the theater a little more cinema feel.
With his background, Stevenson said he wants to put out surveys to get the voice of consumers to see what they’re expecting or not.
“I think pairing that with Josh’s intuition, I think we’re going to make some decisions going forward, but that’s a whole separate conversation about what we’re going to do in the future,” Stevenson said.
Vazquez said they have a great team at North Pointe Cinemas.
“We started out, when we reopened, we had 12 people including me and our management team was included in that number. Now we’re up to 30 employees, and a lot of our employees are here because they love working here. It’s important for us to have people who are enthusiastic about this environment so we can provide the best service for our customers,” he stated.
