Downtown dinner and movie promotion ends

The Downtown Springfield Association is calling its "Dinner & a Movie" promotion a success, having sold more than 7,000 discounted movie tickets to downtown diners.

The program offered downtown restaurant patrons the opportunity to buy $5 tickets to either Hollywood Theaters College Station Stadium 14 or Moxie Cinema from June through August.

The top five participating restaurants, ranked by number of tickets sold, were Springfield Brewing Co., with 1,640 tickets; Maria's Mexican Restaurant, with 953 tickets; Nonna's Italian Restaurant, with 780 tickets; Ziggie's Sidewalk Café, with 600 tickets; and Mille's Café, with 480 tickets.

"I don't think anyone anticipated how popular this promotion would be," said Kathryn Vicat, DSA coordinator, in a news release. "There were times when I would deliver movie tickets to the same restaurant two or three times a week, or a restaurant would go through 60 tickets in one evening."

The success of the summer movie ticket promotion has led to a similar fall program with the downtown live theaters; the program would be timed to lead in to fall performances at Springfield Little Theatre and the Vandivort Theatre, according to the release.