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Openings
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August 17, 2010
New theater to open in Granite City
GRANITE CITY, IL — A new triplex is scheduled to open here on August 20. Owned by the city, the new 499-seat cinema will be operated by St. Louis Cinemas, which operates a number of theaters across the river. Granite City has been without a cinema since 2004. One screen is equipped for 3-D, and the theater incorporates some features from the demolished Washington Theater.
A ribbon-cutting and open house is set for 2:30-6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 18. It will include free popcorn and soda, and a chance to watch some older movies on the big screen.
The theater will open for business Friday, Aug. 20, with “Toy Story 3,” “The Other Guys,” and “The Expendables,” according to Granite City Economic Development Director Jon Ferry.
There is additional detail in the Suburban Journals.
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August 11, 2010
Cinemark opens new theater in Tulsa
TULSA, OK — The Cinemark Broken Arrow opened on August 6. Featuring twelve screens, six of which are 3-D capable, the theater is the chain’s second all-digital theater.
Each theater boasts stadium seating, and they range in size from 100 to 250 seats. That largest capacity theater is smaller than at Cinemark’s Tulsa location at 71st Street and U.S. 169, indicative of the “neighborhood theater” concept that Cinemark envisions for one of the state’s fastest-growing communities for decades.
“We discovered this area of Broken Arrow years ago, and we always knew it would be a perfect spot for a theater,” said James Meredith, vice president of marketing and communications for Cinemark, talking as he toured the crisp, clean multiplex with an undeniable new-movie- theater smell.
There is more at TulsaWorld.
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July 29, 2010
Movie on the screen, dinner on the plate, hubcaps at the bar
BROOKLYN, NY — Brooklyn is getting some more moviegoing options that provide more than just the movie.
Austin, Tex., has the Alamo Drafthouse. San Francisco has Foreign Cinema. Portland, Ore., has McMenamins. And Brooklyn has — well, Brooklyn has many places where you can bring a blanket and a picnic basket and watch a film in a park or on a rooftop, but few indoor options for dinner-and-a-movie year-round.
That will change on Friday, with the opening of reRun Gastropub Theater, a movie screen, bar and restaurant that is an expansion of reBar in Dumbo. The space, with 60 seats, some on low-slung couches, has a college town art-house feel and a sophisticated concession stand, serving things like pulled pork and popcorn topped with duck fat. The programming will focus on festival films that don’t have distribution, as well as cult favorites. (The opening lineup includes “Audrey the Trainwreck,” an off-kilter romance that played at South by Southwest this year, and a one-night-only showing of “The Prowler,” a 1981 B-movie.) A similar theater, indieScreen, is to open in Williamsburg in the fall.
Read more in the New York Times.
Also mentioned in the New York Post.
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July 28, 2010
Abandoned DC move-over house to reopen as new art-house this fall!
WASHINGTON, DC — I have recently leased the old Inner Circle 5, 6, 7 space in Washington, DC and will reopen it as the West End Cinema — a three-screen art-house movie theater — this fall.
The old Inner Circle was a move-over house opened in 1985 at 23rd and M Streets, as a sister venue to the Circle 1 -4, which was located a block south on 23rd (in a building that was torn down to build the Ritz Carlton residences). The 5, 6, 7, which I leased, is in a multi-use building and was never demolished — in fact, it still has the projector systems, platters, sound systems, screens, seats and concessions line exactly where they were when the theater closed in late 2003/early 2004.
I look forward to moving this theater from the “old” listings to the “new” listings on Cinema Treasures soon!
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July 27, 2010
Former Krikorian theater in Corona to reopen under new management
CORONA, CA — The Krikorian Dos Lagos 15 will reopened by the end of July by Knoxville, Tennesee-based Phoenix Big Cities theaters. The new operator plans to add additional 3D capability and other upgrades, and rename the theater as the Dos Lagos Stadium 15.
Karen Lane, vice president of marketing and advertising for Phoenix, said the theater is still being assessed, but plans include expanded concessions, digital projection and surround sound, online ticketing, and digital 3D.
Harrington said the site has a 3D theater now, but two or three more will be equipped, too. Plans also could include a bar and lounge in the lobby, he said.
The full story is in the Press Enterprise.
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July 19, 2010
Twelve-screen Century East opens in Sioux Falls
SIOUX FALLS, SD — Cinemark has opened the Century East in the Dawley Farms Village development on this city’s east side. The new 1,900 seat theater boasts twelve screens, six of which are 3D capable.
Generating excitement for Century East, the first theater on the city’s east side, hasn’t been much of a problem. Movie fans in the area are happy they won’t have to drive extra miles to the city’s other theaters on the west side. And businesses near Century East are counting on the theater to increase traffic and spending.
“Everybody by Iowa and Minnesota has been talking about the development,” said Marie LaRock of Hills, Minn.
There’s more in the Argus Leader.
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July 9, 2010
Former AMC Star Taylor reopens as the Spotlight Taylor
TAYLOR, MI — The father and son team of Ken and Jake Stocker have reopened the ten-screen former AMC Star Taylor which opened in 1989 as one of Jack Loeks' Star Theaters. Now called the Spotlight Taylor the Stockers plan to put the Spotlight name on the Silverdome Drive-in which they reopened in April. They hope to add or acquire other theaters in Michigan as well.
“Most of the time in movie theaters, people feel like they’re getting ripped off,” Jake Stocker told me Monday, as he and his father directed workers putting the finishing touches on renovations at the 10-screen Taylor cinema across Eureka Road from Southland Mall.
Stocker plans to graduate in December from U-M with a sports marketing degree. He studied Southwest Airlines' business model in a class he took and was taken by the parallels between movies and airlines. As with airlines, where mergers keep collapsing one brand into another, the original Star Theatre in Taylor was swallowed up in Loews and AMC megadeals, and then neglected as the giant parent chose to focus on upscale multiplexes.
The full story is at Freep.com.
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July 2, 2010
Fourteen-screen megaplex opens in Palm Coast, FL
PALM COAST, FL – The growing Epic Theatres chain has opened its latest theater in the Town Center here. Its facade is said to be a modern take on the classic Athens Theatre in DeLand, FL (as it originally appeared and as it looks now, after a 2007 restoration that removed a 1950s-era front makeover). The new megaplex has all-digital projection; six screens are 3-D capable.
Flagler County residents are eager for the cinema opening, said Doug Baxter, president of the Flagler County Chamber of Commerce. It’s been three years since the county’s only cinema, Picture Show III in the St. Joe Plaza, closed and forced movie viewers to drive 20 to 30 miles to either Ormond Beach or St. Augustine.
“It’s a long way to drive to watch a movie, especially at night for teens and seniors,” Baxter said. “This is nothing like what we had and people have been calling us ever since it was announced and asking when is it opening. This is great news. It’s another step in us becoming a closer county and helping to keep our spending dollars in the county.”
This Daytona Beach News-Journal has more.
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June 28, 2010
One theatre gone, another rises up
MERRIFIELD, VA — A new complex is being built to replace the Lee Highway Multiplex with a new location of the Angelika Film Center.
Edens & Avant has begun tearing down the multiplex cinema off of Lee Highway in Merrifield to make way for the first phase of a planned 1.9 million-square-foot mixed-use redevelopment that will replace the theater and parking lots with a new cinema, grocery store, townhouse complex, hotel and office space. Called Mosaic, the $150 million project’s retail portion is two-thirds leased by companies including Target, Mom’s Organic Market and Angelika Film Center.
Read more in the Washington Business Journal.
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June 25, 2010
June 27 last day for Regal UA East Hills in Bakersfield
BAKERSFIELD, CA — Surrounded by vacant stores in a virtually abandoned mall in the northern part of the city, the Regal UA East Hills Mall Cinema 10 be closed by the end of the month.
UA employees declined to answer questions Friday, but Bakersfield’s Edwards Cinema manager Herman Mil confirmed the sister theater’s closure, saying the last day of operation would be June 27. Mil said he was not authorized to say more, referring questions to the district office in Fresno. Calls there were referred to Regal’s Tennessee headquarters, closed when the news surfaced. East Hills Mall manager Anne Lynch did not return calls Friday.
The movie complex is the last anchor store in the beleaguered mall, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2009. But the closure of the theater may not be all bad for the mall’s future.
There is more here.