By Russell Clark | January 22, 2021 at 5:43 PM EST – Updated January 22 at 6:16 PM
WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – Being helpful in these unprecedented times is what it’s all about for The Pointe 14 movie theater in Wilmington. They have allowed the New Hanover Regional Medical Center to set up a vaccination site at their location on South 17th Street.
“It’s been amazing. Since day one, whenever they started the setup, to the acceleration of getting it all together has just been phenomenal, their team and their staff and the volunteers. Basically, the whole communities come together to make this happen,” said Steve Sherwood, general manager of The Pointe 14.
The theater has been closed for months and they didn’t have any plans to reopen until New Hanover Regional Medical Center reached out and asked if they could set up one of their vaccination clinics. So far, they were able to do 1,800 total vaccines on Thursday and they think it’s possible to do as many as 2,500.
The space provides a great way for people to be able to follow all the guidelines set by the county health department to make sure they are staying safe. They check in at the box office, head in to get their shot and then sit in one of the theaters until they are cleared to leave.
“We hope that will become maybe a national model using movie theaters, and the owners of the point theaters really asked us to try to share those best practices.,” said Dr. West Paul, chief clinical officer at NHRMC.
Sherwood says it’s not been an easy year for theaters, but they are happy to be a part of the path forward. Sherwood says things have gone smoothly at the South 17th Street location, and they look forward to continuing to be a part of the growing vaccine effort.
Stone Theaters, which runs the Pointe, has had so much success from the vaccine effort here, that they are working to do the same thing at locations in Charlotte and South Carolina through a growing partnership with Novant Health.
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