Bakersfield would become the next Maya location to open-albeit four years later, in July 2009.
The Salinas location was an important proof of concept for Maya Cinemas, evidence that opening a new theater in an underserved area could help revitalize a community. “They have microbreweries, gourmet restaurants, and a new performance venue”-a far cry from the boarded-up buildings and disrepair the Maya founder encountered in his first visit to the city. “If you go to downtown Salinas today, it’s a very attractive tourist destination,” says Esparza. The Maya Cinemas Salinas location opened in July 2005, benefiting from a nearby parking structure newly provided by the city. They eventually landed on Salinas, California, where they counted on support from the city to revive its struggling downtown area. Esparza initially identified San Antonio as an ideal candidate but was unable to come to terms in securing an appropriate site. With the financing settled, the Maya team set out to find their first location. “But they did require that we put up a lot of equity, far more than would have been typical if we had been in some upper-middle-class suburban community.” “They did not have the same kind of redlining history that other mainstream American banks might have had in putting up a lot of money in a working-class neighborhood,” says Esparza. It came at a cost for the entrepreneurs behind Maya Cinemas. Eventually, Esparza partnered with a Taiwanese bank that saw the opportunity in engaging with an immigrant community. It wasn’t hard to make the case that these communities were underserved in terms of cinema screens finding lenders willing to put up the money, however, was to emerge as the next significant challenge for the nascent circuit. “That was the only way for me to get the land and make the case that a movie theater would be successful in a Latino working-class community.”Īccording to the MPAA’s annual moviegoing statistics report (THEME), Hispanic moviegoers are the leading demographic group when it comes to moviegoing frequency in the United States. But by betting on up-and-coming Latino-dominant neighborhoods, Esparza had a hard time finding the right partner to help him realize the vision. The initial barrier to entry came with finding a developer had the first Maya site been earmarked for a suburban shopping mall, it wouldn’t have been much of a challenge to get it off the ground. What Esparza didn’t anticipate, however, was that it would take him half a decade to open his first location. “By going into exhibition, my goal was to reinvest back into the type of communities that I grew up in.” “I knew that there was a love of movies and a tremendous appetite and appreciation for movies across underrepresented communities in the U.S., partly because of my own history and experience with the movies that I produced,” Esparza tells Boxoffice. At the turn of the 21st century he decided to take matters into his own hands by founding Maya Cinemas, a company dedicated to bringing state-of-the-art cinemas to underserved, Latino-dominant communities across the United States. Esparza never doubted there would be a big audience for his productions it was finding venues to play his films that would prove most challenging. “My interests have always centered on creating entertainment and getting that content to an audience,” says the Mexican American producer of Selena (1997).
An accomplished movie producer and entertainment executive, Moctesuma Esparza describes his decision to enter the exhibition business in very simple terms.
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