I also recall that the Olympia Theater, several months after it closed to mainstream movies, operated briefly in mid-1981 as a porn house. However, there was vocal community opposition in the Broadway area, where people from the Broadway/East 55th neighborhood was picketing the theater, and the porn movies lasted for only a few months as a result. Also, shortly before the Olympia closed for good, someone crashed a pickup truck into the lobby…obviously someone unhappy with the porn that the Olympia was showing at the time. The Olympia closed for good after that.
There is a possibility that a few of Tower City Cinemas' screens may be closed to make way for the new Medical Mart/convention center complex. One proposal, which was reported in today’s Plain Dealer (3/19/08) would close a few of Tower City Cinemas' screens (most likely the four screens on the far end) to make way for a walkway between the former Higbee department store (which would house the Medical Mart’s showrooms) to a new convention center to be built alongside the Tower City Center complex. This proposal would leave Tower City Cinemas with 7 screens instead of the current 11…still enough screens for the annual Cleveland International Film Festival, but would mean no mainstream films showing while the festival is going on. The Medical Mart/convention center would help both Tower City Center and the cinemas, even at the expense of losing 4 screens.
The Magic Johnson theater at Randall Park Mall is no longer listed on AMC’s website, and I could not find a website for “O Theater”…whether this theater became an independent or whether “O Theater” is a chain I also don’t know offhand. And the theater did not advertise in the weekday editions of the Plain Dealer this week; so I assume that it’s one of those theaters that only publish showtimes in the weekend newspaper, assuming that the Monday thru Thursday showtimes are the same. Also, it seems like AMC itself is gradually retreating from NE Ohio, since it sold the Loews Richmond Mall 20 to Regal, the Plaza at Chapel Hill to Cleveland Cinemas, closed the Westgate (when the mall got redeveloped), and now, sold the Magic Johnson Randall Park to “O Theater”. All AMC has left here now is the Ridge Park Square and Westwood Town Center theaters in Cleveland and the West Market Plaza in Akron.
This theater is now known as the “O Theater at Randall Park”. Whether AMC or Magic Johnson still has anything to do with this theater I don’t know offhand. It became known as the “O Theater” since Friday, March 14, 2008.
In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I have noticed the same thing with the movie listings and ads…some studios no longer list the locations of the theaters playing the films in their display ads, and Cleveland Cinemas no longer lists showtimes in the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday editions of the PD. In most cases, the showtimes listed for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday ($5 night) are valid for the rest of the week as well. Some other theaters don’t list showtimes in the weekday editions of the PD as well. If Regal Cinemas (which DOES list showtimes in the PD every day) decides to discontinue advertising daily showtimes, the movie section in the Plain Dealer will be pretty much down to only a few theaters. Regal currently has more screens in the Cleveland area than any other chain or operator. Many people still rely on the newspaper to look for showtimes for films…they are also not very likely to go to the internet or call the theater to find out what’s playing and what the showtimes are.
The furniture store that used to be in a bowling alley was in Warrensville Heights, next to Zayre’s, across the street from Thistledown…first it was Ohio Furniture, then Heilig Meyers, which closed when the entire chain folded in the mid-1990’s. Alperts (the GCC-owned furniture chain) was in a newly constructed building at Miles Ave. and Northfield Road; after Alperts left it became Syms (a discount clothing store), then Sun TV, and after being vacant for several years, is Syms again. I think General Cinema also owned Name Brand Furniture…many Name Brand’s became Alperts.
This theatre building is still vacant and boarded up…apparently the Clark-Metro community group wanted to fix up the building in hopes of showing general-audience films there again, as well as hold other community gatherings, but nothing has happened in the past few years.
I was in Columbus yesterday (9/23) and saw the building…very sad that a 14-plex in a part of town that is pretty much under-represented by movie theaters can fail under two different owners. South of I-70 there are few movie theaters in the Columbus area-the only ones I know of on the south side is the drive-in and the Georgesville Road megaplex.
Also, there is an ex-movie theatre building on East Main Street, that now houses a medical clinic, that I am curious about. I saw no pictures of this theatre on the Columbus Library website, but this theatre’s marquee, which looks art-deco, appears to be for the most part intact. I was wondering what the name of this theatre was, and when it closed as a movie theatre. The building now houses the “East Main Med Center”. Maybe Ron or someone else would know…it does look like an impressive building, and I could imagine what it looked like when it was a theatre.
There are now plans to reopen the Capitol by the fall of 2007, as a West Side art/independent film house. The original 1200-seat auditorium will be triplexed and remodeled. This will be part of a plan to turn the West 65th/Detroit Avenue area into a theater district (the Cleveland Public Theatre, which shows stage plays, one of which is in a former film theatre which I don’t know the name of offhand, is across the street-the CPT has been successful for the past several years.) The group behind renovating this theatre hopes to get Cleveland Cinemas to operate it.
The only movie theatre that is still in business near Eastland Mall is the Cinema City off of Brice Road, which is a discount subrun theatre ($1.50 admission)…this is in a small, dead mall off both Brice Road and I-70, just north of Eastland. I think Cinema City has 6 screens, and the interior of the theatre has a lot of neon and chrome…I feel like I’m on the set of a sci-fi movie when I’m in that theatre.
I heard that Marquee Cinemas had financial problems overall. They closed a recently-opened 10-plex in Aurora, OH last year…the Aurora 10-plex (Barrington Square) was reopened several months ago by Cinemark. I think Marquee closed several other sites around the same time.
The Memphis Drive In might be closing at the end of this season, due to a deal being made to possibly sell the land for a “furniture warehouse” operation. However, a final decision regarding the sale of the land where the Memphis Drive-In stands won’t be made until September, so there may still be hope that the Cleveland area’s last drive-in survives, should this land sale fall through. The Memphis is in a landlocked area, surrounded by other industrial buildings and a creek…there is too little land to construct an average retail, industrial, or warehouse operation, so there is a possibility that this land sale deal will fall through, and that the drive-in survives beyond this season.
The last time the Capitol was in use as a movie theatre was briefly in 1980 and 1981, when the Cleveland International Film Festival exhibited certain films there…at the time the film festival was first expanding, with films also showing at CWRU and the Colony Theatre (now Shaker Square Cinemas) as well as the Capitol. I think the films at the Capitol were part of an Eastern European program. After the ‘81 film festival the theatre has been dark.
The Austintown Movies is still open, although the theatre no longer shows art/independent films. It is a discount subrun theatre again, charging $3.50 admission. As of May 1, the theatre will no longer be accepting Cleveland Cinemas passes-I think the theatre will officially change hands at that time.
The Westgate sixplex is to be demolished to make way for a Lowe’s home improvement warehouse…part of the redevelopment of the “new” Westgate, which will be a “lifestyle center”, somewhat like Crocker Park several miles west.
The theatre that was taken over by “Freedom Academy” (anti-busing advocate Norbert Denerll’s former private school) as a performing arts school was the Variety, at West 117th and Lorain. The former Lorain Theatre, I think, became a porn house (the “Denmark Adult Theatre”) in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s. I do recall an adult theatre in that vicinity in the 1970’s, that closed by the late 1970’s after former mayor Ralph Perk was on his own “anti-pornography” crusade that eventually cost him the 1977 mayoral election. Afterward I think a secondhand furniture store occupied the former theatre.
The theatre is still open as of today…apparently Cleveland Cinemas is still announcing films there on their website. I think the arts group I mentioned earlier was successful so far with keeping independent film alive in the Youngstown area.
Part of the former Heights Art Theatre/Centrum recently reopened as the “Ground Floor Comedy Club”, which features a resident players group, visiting comedians, and a “B-movie” night, according to their first advertisement. The comedy club occupies the former balcony of the theatre. I think a sports bar is still planned for the downstairs of the theatre building.
I remember reading about an attempt by a local arts group to keep the Austintown Movies opened, and Cleveland Cinemas did book movies for at least one additional week there (I get their “Sprockets” emails)…whether this group was successful I don’t know. Art and independent films are a hard sell in a market like Youngstown, and I’m surprised that the Austintown Movies held on as long as it did with that format. (I think it was a discount theatre for a while after the Regal megaplex opened up next door to Austintown Plaza, before the theatre became an art house.)
I also recall that the Olympia Theater, several months after it closed to mainstream movies, operated briefly in mid-1981 as a porn house. However, there was vocal community opposition in the Broadway area, where people from the Broadway/East 55th neighborhood was picketing the theater, and the porn movies lasted for only a few months as a result. Also, shortly before the Olympia closed for good, someone crashed a pickup truck into the lobby…obviously someone unhappy with the porn that the Olympia was showing at the time. The Olympia closed for good after that.
The “O” Theater at Randall Park, which the AMC Magic Johnson is known as now, has a website, http://www.randallparktheater.com .
There is a possibility that a few of Tower City Cinemas' screens may be closed to make way for the new Medical Mart/convention center complex. One proposal, which was reported in today’s Plain Dealer (3/19/08) would close a few of Tower City Cinemas' screens (most likely the four screens on the far end) to make way for a walkway between the former Higbee department store (which would house the Medical Mart’s showrooms) to a new convention center to be built alongside the Tower City Center complex. This proposal would leave Tower City Cinemas with 7 screens instead of the current 11…still enough screens for the annual Cleveland International Film Festival, but would mean no mainstream films showing while the festival is going on. The Medical Mart/convention center would help both Tower City Center and the cinemas, even at the expense of losing 4 screens.
The Magic Johnson theater at Randall Park Mall is no longer listed on AMC’s website, and I could not find a website for “O Theater”…whether this theater became an independent or whether “O Theater” is a chain I also don’t know offhand. And the theater did not advertise in the weekday editions of the Plain Dealer this week; so I assume that it’s one of those theaters that only publish showtimes in the weekend newspaper, assuming that the Monday thru Thursday showtimes are the same. Also, it seems like AMC itself is gradually retreating from NE Ohio, since it sold the Loews Richmond Mall 20 to Regal, the Plaza at Chapel Hill to Cleveland Cinemas, closed the Westgate (when the mall got redeveloped), and now, sold the Magic Johnson Randall Park to “O Theater”. All AMC has left here now is the Ridge Park Square and Westwood Town Center theaters in Cleveland and the West Market Plaza in Akron.
This theater is now known as the “O Theater at Randall Park”. Whether AMC or Magic Johnson still has anything to do with this theater I don’t know offhand. It became known as the “O Theater” since Friday, March 14, 2008.
In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I have noticed the same thing with the movie listings and ads…some studios no longer list the locations of the theaters playing the films in their display ads, and Cleveland Cinemas no longer lists showtimes in the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday editions of the PD. In most cases, the showtimes listed for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday ($5 night) are valid for the rest of the week as well. Some other theaters don’t list showtimes in the weekday editions of the PD as well. If Regal Cinemas (which DOES list showtimes in the PD every day) decides to discontinue advertising daily showtimes, the movie section in the Plain Dealer will be pretty much down to only a few theaters. Regal currently has more screens in the Cleveland area than any other chain or operator. Many people still rely on the newspaper to look for showtimes for films…they are also not very likely to go to the internet or call the theater to find out what’s playing and what the showtimes are.
The furniture store that used to be in a bowling alley was in Warrensville Heights, next to Zayre’s, across the street from Thistledown…first it was Ohio Furniture, then Heilig Meyers, which closed when the entire chain folded in the mid-1990’s. Alperts (the GCC-owned furniture chain) was in a newly constructed building at Miles Ave. and Northfield Road; after Alperts left it became Syms (a discount clothing store), then Sun TV, and after being vacant for several years, is Syms again. I think General Cinema also owned Name Brand Furniture…many Name Brand’s became Alperts.
This theatre building is still vacant and boarded up…apparently the Clark-Metro community group wanted to fix up the building in hopes of showing general-audience films there again, as well as hold other community gatherings, but nothing has happened in the past few years.
View link
Cleveland.com (Plain Dealer) article…American Greetings, which has its world headquarters next door, has bought the Memphis Drive-In.
The Memphis Drive-In closed permanently as of 10/1/06. I read on the Sun Newspapers web site (Brooklyn Sun Journal) that the property was sold.
Drove by the Milo today, the marquee was removed but the carpet cleaning business is still there.
I was in Columbus yesterday (9/23) and saw the building…very sad that a 14-plex in a part of town that is pretty much under-represented by movie theaters can fail under two different owners. South of I-70 there are few movie theaters in the Columbus area-the only ones I know of on the south side is the drive-in and the Georgesville Road megaplex.
Also, there is an ex-movie theatre building on East Main Street, that now houses a medical clinic, that I am curious about. I saw no pictures of this theatre on the Columbus Library website, but this theatre’s marquee, which looks art-deco, appears to be for the most part intact. I was wondering what the name of this theatre was, and when it closed as a movie theatre. The building now houses the “East Main Med Center”. Maybe Ron or someone else would know…it does look like an impressive building, and I could imagine what it looked like when it was a theatre.
There are now plans to reopen the Capitol by the fall of 2007, as a West Side art/independent film house. The original 1200-seat auditorium will be triplexed and remodeled. This will be part of a plan to turn the West 65th/Detroit Avenue area into a theater district (the Cleveland Public Theatre, which shows stage plays, one of which is in a former film theatre which I don’t know the name of offhand, is across the street-the CPT has been successful for the past several years.) The group behind renovating this theatre hopes to get Cleveland Cinemas to operate it.
This theatre is still open for business. The website does list show times for this week.
The only movie theatre that is still in business near Eastland Mall is the Cinema City off of Brice Road, which is a discount subrun theatre ($1.50 admission)…this is in a small, dead mall off both Brice Road and I-70, just north of Eastland. I think Cinema City has 6 screens, and the interior of the theatre has a lot of neon and chrome…I feel like I’m on the set of a sci-fi movie when I’m in that theatre.
I heard that Marquee Cinemas had financial problems overall. They closed a recently-opened 10-plex in Aurora, OH last year…the Aurora 10-plex (Barrington Square) was reopened several months ago by Cinemark. I think Marquee closed several other sites around the same time.
The Memphis Drive In might be closing at the end of this season, due to a deal being made to possibly sell the land for a “furniture warehouse” operation. However, a final decision regarding the sale of the land where the Memphis Drive-In stands won’t be made until September, so there may still be hope that the Cleveland area’s last drive-in survives, should this land sale fall through. The Memphis is in a landlocked area, surrounded by other industrial buildings and a creek…there is too little land to construct an average retail, industrial, or warehouse operation, so there is a possibility that this land sale deal will fall through, and that the drive-in survives beyond this season.
The last time the Capitol was in use as a movie theatre was briefly in 1980 and 1981, when the Cleveland International Film Festival exhibited certain films there…at the time the film festival was first expanding, with films also showing at CWRU and the Colony Theatre (now Shaker Square Cinemas) as well as the Capitol. I think the films at the Capitol were part of an Eastern European program. After the ‘81 film festival the theatre has been dark.
The Austintown Movies is still open, although the theatre no longer shows art/independent films. It is a discount subrun theatre again, charging $3.50 admission. As of May 1, the theatre will no longer be accepting Cleveland Cinemas passes-I think the theatre will officially change hands at that time.
Correction…Westwood Town Center has 6 screens.
The Westgate sixplex is to be demolished to make way for a Lowe’s home improvement warehouse…part of the redevelopment of the “new” Westgate, which will be a “lifestyle center”, somewhat like Crocker Park several miles west.
The theatre that was taken over by “Freedom Academy” (anti-busing advocate Norbert Denerll’s former private school) as a performing arts school was the Variety, at West 117th and Lorain. The former Lorain Theatre, I think, became a porn house (the “Denmark Adult Theatre”) in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s. I do recall an adult theatre in that vicinity in the 1970’s, that closed by the late 1970’s after former mayor Ralph Perk was on his own “anti-pornography” crusade that eventually cost him the 1977 mayoral election. Afterward I think a secondhand furniture store occupied the former theatre.
The theatre is still open as of today…apparently Cleveland Cinemas is still announcing films there on their website. I think the arts group I mentioned earlier was successful so far with keeping independent film alive in the Youngstown area.
Part of the former Heights Art Theatre/Centrum recently reopened as the “Ground Floor Comedy Club”, which features a resident players group, visiting comedians, and a “B-movie” night, according to their first advertisement. The comedy club occupies the former balcony of the theatre. I think a sports bar is still planned for the downstairs of the theatre building.
I remember reading about an attempt by a local arts group to keep the Austintown Movies opened, and Cleveland Cinemas did book movies for at least one additional week there (I get their “Sprockets” emails)…whether this group was successful I don’t know. Art and independent films are a hard sell in a market like Youngstown, and I’m surprised that the Austintown Movies held on as long as it did with that format. (I think it was a discount theatre for a while after the Regal megaplex opened up next door to Austintown Plaza, before the theatre became an art house.)