This may sound like a major exaggeration — and some may even considerate silly — but Brett DeNafo and his partners changed my life when they opened Square Theatres.
You might think, “Are you kidding me? They are just movie theaters. How can that change your life?”
Well, truth be told, there is not another entertainment medium on this planet that I love more than going to see a good movie.
Before Square Theatres debuted in Stone Harbor, then Northfield and Ventnor, then Rio Grande, the South Jersey movie-going scene was weak and limited to say the least.
The only saving grace for years was the IMAX at the Tropicana, but that was one screen. Regal Cinemas in Mays Landing, which have improved more recently, offered a lot of options, but it was dated, not well taken care of and certainly didn’t offer a memorable experience. And, before that, the experiences at the Shore Mall and other locations by Frank Theaters was ridiculously below average with sticky floors, torn screens and horrible sound.
I used to have to drive to Philadelphia or look forward to a visit to the Cinemark near my Scranton-area hometown when I visited my mother if I wanted a great movie experience.
Square Theatres changed all of that.
All of a sudden, we have state-of-the-art sound, immaculate digital projection systems, new perfect screens, plush and sometimes reclining seating on rising tiers so no one ever obstructs your view, beautifully designed lobbies and theaters, another amazing IMAX experience, concession stands with soda machines where you can refill your drink at no extra charge and popcorn stations where you can drown your freshly popped corn with as much butter as you desire along with flavored seasonings to sprinkle over it.
These places are special!
And, now with a new theater that debuted last year in Ocean City — the Moorlyn Square Theatre — Square Theatres continue to make me and other movie lovers extraordinarily happy.
“We wanted people to have a good experience,” DeNafo said. “We wanted them to walk into the theaters that are clean. If you go in Stone Harbor — Harbor is going to be 10 years old next year — it looks like it just opened yesterday. We get the carpets cleaned every couple of months. We make sure the seats are in good shape. We make sure the screens, the projectors … we’re always doing maintenance on our theaters all the time. And I wanted to run these places that if you walked into the theater, you felt good.”
And that, my loyal readers, is an understatement.
Welcome to Ocean City!
When I first came to South Jersey in the mid-1990s, I lived in Ocean City on 9th Street and Ocean Avenue, a block from the Moorlyn Terrace. I would walk to the movie theater constantly despite its ridiculously awful experience. Sometimes the heater worked, sometimes it didn’t. The same goes for the air conditioner. And you could count on the projector breaking at least once per visit.
But, when it closed in 2017, it was a sad day. Ocean City didn’t have a movie theater anymore after decades and decades! And it stayed that way for nearly a decade.
Then Square Theatres came to the rescue in 2024, taking the former dilapidated Moorlyn Terrace theater and transforming it to the best theater Ocean City has ever had.
“We actually looked into Ocean City back in 2017 (to open a theater),” DeNafo said. “We always loved Ocean City. So, that’s why we saved the best for last, because Ocean City is really our last theater we want to do in this area.”
DeNafo, who is also in the restaurant business with dining establishments related to the Stone Harbor and Ventnor theaters along with a new restaurant in the former Santucci’s in Ventnor called Ventnor Social, owned a Stewart’s Root Beer location on the boardwalk in the late ’90s and early 2000s. So, his heart has been in Ocean City for a very long time.
“I always loved the Ocean City boardwalk. It’s just a great boardwalk,” DeNafo said. “I just love the town, so I always wanted to do a theater there. Every city has been great to us that we have built in. They all want us to come in and do a theater. And Ocean City, I can’t say enough about the mayor there and the town. They are wonderful to us. They were loving this idea of us, you know, really gutting that theater out and building a new one. No one has ever done that to this theater, even when Bruce Frank did it. They knocked half the building down, and then the other half they really didn’t remodel. So, we really came in and gutted the whole place and gave you a brand-new movie theater in there. Ocean City, because I had my first business up there, that was special to me!”
The beauty of the Moorlyn Square is that, just like Ventnor, Square Theatre ownership was dedicated to preserving as much as they could of the original Ocean City structure from 1905 without sacrificing the modern amenities that it offers. So, you get the best movie-making experience of today combined with the nostalgia of yesteryear.
“It sat empty for all those years,” DeNafo said. “Roofs were leaking. It was a mess. But this is something interesting about all of our theaters: Tilton has the most seats, but guess what’s second? Ocean City! We kept the same footprint there: Four theaters that hold about 800 people total. That’s our second biggest theater. It’s very deceiving. You walk in, and the screens are really big. They’re nice-sized auditoriums, and we could have cut them down. We could have made it so there could have been six screens in there, but we thought, ‘Let’s keep it a fourplex so the screen sizes are nice.’”
That, of course, defies what the Franks and many theater owners of the past would attempt.
“I think that was the philosophy back in the day: Let’s have as many screens as possible,” DeNafo said. “And you walked in, and the screen size was like 10 feet. Nobody does that anymore, so we kept the footprint the way it was. So, we gutted the theaters and put all new everything in there.”
While the seats are luxe in Ocean City, they don’t recline like some of the other Square Theatres for a valid reason.
“We did that because we didn’t want to lose the capacity,” he said. “On a rainy day, it’s important to have as many seats as possible because that’s when you make your money in Ocean City. When you go to recliners, you lose 50 to 60 percent of your capacity. At Tilton, we were able to put the recliners in because the place is so big that it didn’t really matter. We thought Ocean City was better off just putting regular seats in. And they are very nice seats … they’re rockers. They’re like the same seats that are in our IMAX in Northfield. So, they’re leather seats. They rock back and forth. They’re very comfortable.”
But that’s not all. Ocean City offers 7.1 Dolby Atmos sound, and digital 4K projectors.
“It’s state-of-the-art sound. The screens are state-of-the-art. Projectors are state-of-the-art,” DeNafo said.
This year is the first full season for Moorlyn Square since construction wasn’t completed until the end of July.
“We really didn’t have a full summer under our belt,” DeNafo said. “But we had a really good fall there. It’s weird. October was OK, but then when ‘Wicked’ came out, we were packed there. We were doing Thursday through Sunday in November. And then we did Thursday through Sunday in December. And then that last week when kids are off to school in the New Year, we stayed open that whole week in Ocean City. We did really well. Then we shut the place down on Jan. 2, and then it closed all the way until the first week of May when we reopened. Now we are open seven days a week up until maybe like the middle of September. And then I’ll cut it back down to just weekends all the way through January.”
As expected, moviegoers are thrilled to have a theater back in Ocean City … and a beautiful one at that!
And they aren’t done making it even better.
“People are so happy,” DeNafo said. “A lot of people still don’t know we’re open because we don’t have our main marquee up on the side. So, we’re putting up a huge, beautiful marquee, like our marquee in Ventnor and Harbor. It’s just not done yet. That’s going to go up next year. And then we’re also putting a new sign up on the boardwalk. That’s going up next month.”
Moorlyn Square is located at 837 Moorlyn Terrace, Ocean City. They are open seven days a week in peak summer season, but hours change seasonally. Go to SquareTheatres.com for showtimes and more information.
Scott Cronick is an award-winning journalist who has written about entertainment, food, news and more in South Jersey for nearly three decades. He hosts a daily radio show – “Off The Press with Scott Cronick” – 4 to 6 p.m. weekdays on Newstalk WOND 1400-AM, 92.3-FM, and WONDRadio.com, and he also co-owns Tennessee Avenue Beer Hall in Atlantic City, while working on various projects, including charitable efforts, throughout the area. He can be reached at scronick@comcast.net.
