Welcome to BigScreenBiz.com

I have a classic triangle marquee. This theater was built in 1941 and at that time Main Street wa thin and had parallel parking. At some point parking became a problem and the city council widened the street to put in angled parking. This is fine and really helps the parking situation except for one thing: my marquee sticks out into the street now.

Three years ago one of the city trucks hit it breaking two sticks of neon and slightly denting it (it's skin is made of tin). This morning the garbage truck hit it and took out three flasher bulbs and possibly the sockets as well. The bulbs, of course, are no problem. But changing out the sockets will be a fairly major operation. They also dented it as well and we'll need to get a dent puller up there and then some cosmetic painting to cover up the holes made by the dent puller.

All this leads to my question: What should I do about this? This kind of thing is just going to keep happening unless something is below the marquee to alert drivers that there is a clearance problem there, or better yet, prevents drivers from coming that close to the curb at all. Any ideas?

You need a no parking drop off zone and fire zone. If it was just widened for parking then maybe they could do this. Have them put up some orange poles to denote the drop off zone for the theatre. We made sure that in the street redesign our front area was still a drop off zone and fire zone and not parking.

The city here is doing something similar but they are making the sidwalks bigger and the street smaller so my marquee will no longer provide a rain shelter to those being dropped off.

Does not sound like a parking or Fire Lane problem. It's going to happen again even with those poles in place. The problem is delivery truck drivers with large over hangs above or just behind the cabs. There are afew marquees here (NYC-Times Square area) that have that type of damage. They have that drop off type of lanes, but there is no parking in front of the theatre. They still get banged up from those large trucks.

[This message has been edited by Avco (edited March 23, 2007).]

The theatre I am looking to buy has the same problem. The corner is all dented cause the marque is on a corner and gets banged by trucks!

In Indiana, where my theatre is, it is state law to have a fire lane in front of a theatre.
When I bought my theatre in 1996, it had been closed for three years and the city had taken back the fire lane for parking.
I quickly got the fire marshall to order the city to put it back.

So if you had your fire lane and no parking spaces there, it should be enough space to move the sidewalk out just in front of the marquee out to where you can't drive into it.

You would probably have to pay for the new sidewalk and curb, but it beats a mangled marquee.