By
- Greg Garrison | ggarrison@al.com
Have you been wondering what ever happened to the “Dollar Movie Theater” on Lorna Road in Hoover?
Moviegoers from all over the Birmingham metro flocked there to see movies for $1 and later $2 when it was the Carmike 10
It was packed out at times for showings of movies like “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One” in 2014
The building is still there, but there will be no more discount movies
This weekend, it officially becomes a Hindu temple. An open house will be held Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m
The same transformation recently happened at the former discount movie theater in Huntsville, which opened as a Hindu temple on May 10
The former AMC Classic on Lorna Road in Hoover opened as a Carmike Cinemas 10 location in 1993
The AMC Classic Huntsville 10 originally opened in 1998 as a Carmike Cinemas 10 at 1359 Old Monro
Both closed in 2020
The former movie theaters were then bought by a worldwide Hindu organization called BAPS, which stands for Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha
BAPS created the first Hindu temple in Birmingham in Roebuck on a hill just off Interstate 59 in 1997 in the former Presbyterian Church East. That temple closed in 2025, as the BAPS devotees worked towards renovating the former movie theater
“We just decided it was time to move closer to Hoover,” said Bhavik Patel, community affairs coordinator for BAPS. “There’s just a lot more footprint of our population here. It’s a nicer and more central location.”
A Hindu temple typically features statues of gods, called sacred images. “We will have new ones coming in and installed on Sunday morning,” Patel said
The former movie theater will make a perfect new home, he said
“It’s already designed with big spaces, high ceilings; they’re designed to be soundproof, so it works for our assemblies and music system,” Patel said
All the movie seats were removed during the renovation, he said
“We just figured it would be a nice fit and it worked out okay,” Patel said
Of the former 10 cinema showing rooms, two were demolished and combined for the main gathering area, he said
At the Roebuck location, there were typically 250 to 300 Hindus gathering every Sunday. That’s likely to increase with the much larger facility that will be able to accommodate more of the hundreds of Hindu families that live in the region, Patel said
Inside each Mandir, or Hindu temple, there is an elaborate hand-carved throne called the Sinhaasan that holds large pictures or idols of Hindu gods and swamis who are venerated by devotees of the BAPS Hindu movement
The devotees worship Lord Swaminarayan, who lived from 1781 to 1820 and is considered by members to have been an incarnation of the supreme deity. Hindus pride themselves on religious tolerance and willingness to recognize other gods. Shrines to other traditional Hindu gods are usually included in the throne
The statues in the temple require a priest who lives at the temple and conducts daily rituals that involve caring for the statues, which are treated as the actual presence of the gods
The ceremonies involve ceremonially waking, “feeding” – by offering foods – and bathing the gods
Worship at the temple on Sunday afternoons includes singing with traditional instruments; a ceremony of lights at the throne using a silver plate with candles made from cotton balls dipped in butter; and discourses on the scriptures, especially the Vachnamrutum, a work that contains the teachings of Lord Swaminarayan in the form of 251 Hindu sermons dutifully recorded by five saints, or monks, who accompanied him at all times
The sermons each address a topic, such as promoting vegetarianism or cautioning about materialism
The devotees also respect other traditional Hindu scriptures, such as the Bhagavad Gita, in which Lord Krishna and the Pandava warrior Arjuna discuss the meaning and nature of existence
“The almighty God is one,” spiritual leader Pramukh Swami Maharaj said in a 1988 interview with The Birmingham News on a visit to Birmingham. “For others, he comes on this earth in different forms.”
Pramukh Swami preached that personal improvement comes through honesty, nonviolence and worship of God, along with abstinence from alcohol, drugs, tobacco, animal flesh and sex, except for married people, who must remain faithful to their partners
After leading the organization since 1971, he died in 2016 and was succeeded by Mahant Swami Maharaj as president of BAPS
Most BAPS members are from Gujurat, India, and their most common last name is Patel. Nearly all the members of the BAPS temple have the last name Patel
Members organize charitable efforts and perform good works such as taking part in blood donation
The BAPS group began holding group worship in homes around Birmingham in about 1980
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