Final Showing of Movies at the Ritz Next Week

Main Street Toccoa’s Summer Movies at the Ritz series is ending after next week’s showing of “Moana.”

The series began back in June and ran every Thursday through June and July.

Main Street Manager Christian Hamilton said that this has been another successful year of the Summer Movie series.

At the Downtown Development Authority’s meeting last week, there had been 1600 people come to the movie series and after next week’s showing, they estimate to see over 2,000 people from June to July.

Hamilton said this event is a chance to support economic development in downtown.

“We do this event to support economic development in downtown Toccoa and to support the opportunity for everyone to come see a summer movie,” said Hamilton. “We appreciate the attendance, we appreciate the fact that Toccoa residents come to our beautiful historic theatre, spend some time with family at this affordable event. We thoroughly enjoy doing it every year and can’t wait to do it again next year.”

Most of the people who have attended the event are local, however, Hamilton said that out of town guests do attend.

“Most of the people that come to the summer movies are local, however, we do have out of town guests. We get a lot of buses that come in to see the movie,” said Hamilton. “It’s definitely becoming a popular regional event as well as just for Toccoa residents.”

Movie tickets are $1 as well as all the concessions that are served.

“We want to make this an affordable event for the entire family, something for people to do in the summer to spend time with their family, their kids, boyfriends, girlfriends,” said Hamilton. “We just want to make this an easily accessible event that people can come downtown, see a movie and enjoy our wonderful theatre.”

Another feature of this event is the new sound system being used in the Ritz.

“We absolutely love our new sound system,” said Hamilton. “It was funded in part by the Appalachian Regional Commission. It’s beautiful, we have wonderful surround sound capability and I think it goes to showcase the quality of sound that has begun to take place at the Ritz Theatre and I think everyone else enjoys it as well.”

Hamilton said they look forward to a big crowd for their final showings next week at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Summer Movies at the Ritz will be back next year.