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Movie Theatres: Designing in the Dark

When Litigation Drives the Design Process

After years of litigation and a stack of signed settlement agreements, the curtain appears to be coming down on the fight over where to place wheelchair seating in stadium-style movie theatres -- or is it?
It has been more than a year since the ink dried on the last consent agree­ment between the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and one of the national movie theatre companies. And with no new high profile cases in the pipeline, it appears as though the design guid­ance set forth in those agreements and addressed in the proposed Americans with Disabilities Act/Architectural Barriers Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADA/ABA-AG) and the upcoming 2008 ANSI A117.1 Standard on Ac­cessible and Usable Buildings and Facilities has at least for now quieted the official wrangling.
First Test
Movie theatre design and especially stadium-style design be­came one of the first tests of the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG) to see if it could address accessibility issues of designs that emerged post-ADA. That test fell short of expectations as it became evident early on that theatre design solutions were going to be litiga­tion-driven when one of the first ADA-related lawsuits was filed against a movie theatre in Washington, DC.
According to Steve Fellman, outside counsel for the National Association of Theatre Own­ers (NATO), movie theatres have been a source of concern for two reasons. “First, movies are the most popular form of public entertainment outside the home,” he says. “Second, up until the mid-1960’s all movie theatres had sloped floors rather than stadium-style seating. It is relatively easy to locate wheelchair seating in a sloped floor auditorium as there are no stairs. With the advent of stadium-style seat­ing for movies, the aisles were staired rather than ramped so that access became an issue.”One of the first ADA-related lawsuits was filed against AMC Union Station 9 Theatres. The prin­cipal issue addressed in the suit was the place­ment of all the wheelchair seating in the rear of the theatre. According to John Paul Scott, an architect and ADA specialist who has been moni­toring ADA issues on public assembly areas and motion picture theatres for more than 15 years, the designers placed them in the back because there was already a level space and the location was next to the entry to provide a ready means of fire egress. AMC lost the case and designers had to find other places for wheelchair seating.
So Then Where?
During the years of litigation when no one could agree on where accessible wheelchair positions should be, NATO asked the DOJ to establish a special rule under the ADA defining where wheel­wheel­chair seating should be located in stadium-style movie theatres, according to Fellman. “NATO recommended that the wheelchair spaces be located one third of the way back from the screen, on a riser in the stadium section of the auditorium,” he said. “The [DOJ] responded by saying that there was no need for a special rule for theatres as DOJ was coming out with revised proposed standards within 12 months. That was in 1999 and the DOJ has still not revised the standards. Theatre de­signers tried various approaches while waiting for guidance. Manyfollowed the NATO proposal.”
Scott recalled that theatre owners were in a difficult po­sition. “They put their heads in the sand to wait out the litigation and the eventual settlements,” he said. “Doing any­thing else would have been interpreted by DOJ, the litigants and the courts as an act of error and omission for previous efforts.”Despite the design limbo, the situation did lead to theater designers holding meetings and charettes to discuss the design and the legal issues. Scott said, marketing and seating usage studies quickly discovered that wheelchair space usage in multi­plex theatres was 1/20 of that in a normal single theatre. This is because the same one out of 100 people who use wheelchairs have 10 to 20 the­atres to select from to view a movie, rather than a single auditorium in a live theater complex.
“What they learned from this process is that they should have then asked the [US Architectur­al & Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board)] to consider multiplex theaters differently than a live performance theater or auditorium. And that they should base wheel­chair seating counts on the total facility with a minimum per auditorium -- rather than base it on the same table used for all single auditoriums.”
Safe Harbor
According to Fellman, these days most sta­dium-style movie theatre owners have found a “safe harbor” in the design of theatres with fewer than 300 seats. The features include wheelchair locations:

  1. on risers in the rear 60% of seats;
  2. with companion seating; and
  3. with an unobstructed view of the screen.

Hindsight
Fellman believes that all of the litigation could and should have been avoided if the government had been willing to sit down with both theatre operators and disability rights groups and negoti­ate an agreement in the late 1990’s. “Both theatre operators and the disability rights groups asked DOJ to do this,” he says. “However, the govern­ment was not willing to do so claiming that it could only engage in rulemaking or litigation and that the type of negotiation we proposed was beyond the scope of the DOJ’s authority.”
Scott agreed that some government interven­tion could have helped settle the issue. “Design solutions were proposed at the Florida and Cali­fornia stadium-style seating theatre design char­rettes in 2001 and 2002. The US Access Board could have added the results into the new ADA/ABA-AG and it would have been placed into the ICC A117.1 standard for accessible design. The DOJ could have simply just published another four-page, undated, design standard as it did for athletic stadiums and sight-lines-over-standing-spectators in the mid 1990’s. But Access Board and DOJ did nothing, waiting for the other to blink…. Maybe those theater projects planned from 2002 to 2004 could have been redesigned to reflect these new requirements. But entropy prevails.”
Seating Settled?
Despite the lull in litigation, the seating de­bate is not over. Considering the length of time it takes to plan, design and build a multiplex project, Scott said there may still be some pre-settlement designs in the pipeline.
NATO’s Fellman said he hopes that the issue as it relates to new construction is settled, but he has doubts about the rest. “…Until I see the final revised DOJ standards, I will not know for sure…. I do not think that anything is settled with regard to the many theatres built between the mid 1990’s and the time of the consent orders and which were built by companies not covered by the consent orders.”

AMC Stadium-Style Movie Theaters

Ordered to Become Accessible

AMC stadium-style movie theaters nationwide will be made accessible under a Jan.10, 2006 ruling in United States v. AMC Entertainment, Inc., et al., (C.D. Cal.). Previously, AMC was found in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for failing to locate wheelchair and companion seating in the stadium sections of its stadium-style movie theaters.
According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), after attempts to reach an agreement with AMC on retrofits for existing theaters and other remedies proved unsuccessful, DOJ filed a motion for summary judgment and a proposed remedial order, which the court endorsed in its entirety. The order requires AMC to: (1) perform specified modifications in approximately 1,200 stadium-style auditoriums nationwide, including building ramps in about 350 of these auditoriums; (2) ensure that any new stadium-style theaters built by AMC over the next five years conform to specified design standards, including DOJ’s interpretation of line-of-sight requirements; (3) pay $200,000 in total monetary relief
to complainants; and (4) pay $50,000 in civil penalties for each of two AMC defendants.
When asked about DOJ interpretation of line-of-sight requirements, DOJ Spokesman Eric
Holland said, “The ADA Standard includes a requirement for wheelchairs in seating locations to provide comparable lines of sight to those offered to other patrons which includes choices of sightlines within the stadium.”

 

 

DOJ Performs Compliance Review of the New Nationals Ballpark

The new Washington National Ballpark is expected to be a showcase of Americans with Disabilities Act compliance, thanks to the help of the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
In June 2005, the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ initiated a compliance re­view of the own­ers and operators of the new ball­park that will be home to the Washington Na­tionals baseball team. Citing au­thority under Ti­tles II and III, DOJ opened its review when the ballpark was still in the conceptual design phase.
From the outset, the compliance review focused on ensuring that the Nationals Ballpark, when built, will be in full compliance with the requirements of the ADA, according to DOJ. The compliance review was intended to be a collaborative undertaking in which the Civil Rights Division would work closely with the owner, the DC Sports & Enter­tainment Commission, operator of the Nation­als Major League Baseball franchise; architect HOK/Devrouax and design-builder Purnell, PLLC, the architects selected to design the sta­dium; and Clark-Hunt-Smoot, a joint venture as the parties charged with building the new ballpark.
In an effort to provide a variety of seating loca­tions options for people who use wheelchairs, the architects included more seating locations than the 1 percent required by the ADA Standards. There are approximately 428 wheelchair seating locations in general seating with 435 companion seats. Only about 396 wheelchair seating spaces are required under the ADA.
One of the challenges of designing wheelchair seating locations on the upper deck was the need to create an accessible means of egress, according to Ed Roether, head of quality control for HOK Sports. Roether noted that they designed a raised deck to provide lines of sight, over standing specta­tors, for people in the wheelchair seating locations and the necessary means of egress. However, when created, the deck, designed to accommodate six wheelchair spaces, obstructed more than 12 seats in the adjacent area. So they chose to make the decks bigger (eliminating some seats) to minimize sightline obstructions to adjacent seats.
Layout of the new Washington Nationals Stadium
Working with the Nationals and the DOJ, HOK Sports has incorporated a variety of features to meet the needs of Nationals fans with disabilities:
1. Captioning - displays to enable captioning will be provided; they also will be tied to emer­gency power and interconnected with the fire alarm system for notification during emergencies.
2. Assistive Listening - an FM broadcast sys­tem with individual receivers will be available to serve those needing assistive listening.
3. General Seating - the ballpark has a ap­proximately 41,000 general seats, which in­cludes 428 wheelchair spaces, 435 companion chairs and 397 designated aisle seats.
4. Site Arrival - Accessible routes are pro­vided to and within the site to each entrance and each ticket window from accessible parking, accessible drop-off and from accessible public transportation stops, including a MetroRail sta­tion located less than a block from the main entry to the ballpark.
5. Ticket Windows - every ticket booth has a counter 34 inches high; in addition, all counters are less than 36 inches high.
6. Concession Counters - every concession counter is 34 inches high.
7. Restrooms - all toilet rooms, both pub­lic and non-public, are accessible; unisex toilet rooms are provided on the lower level, club level and upper level — 10 total for all three levels including seven off of the concourse and three in first aid rooms.
8. Suites - the ballpark features eight Founders Suites, 59 private suites, two owners’ suites and 10 party suites, for a total of 1,200 suite seats; each suite is accessible and includes wheelchair seating and an accessible toilet room.
9. Bars and Lounges - in addition to having accessible lounge seating areas, tables and din­ing surfaces, portions of bars are provided at accessible heights.
10. Entrances - every entrance is accessible.
11. Accessible Routes - accessible routes are provided from each entrance to all public and non-public spaces.

 

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