Centennial Lakes 8
7311 France Avenue South,
Edina,
MN
7311 France Avenue South,
Edina,
MN
2 people
favorited this theater
This was a rather generic General Cinema theater built in 1990, which offered high-priced popcorn and snacks alongside first-run movies in a nothing-special atmosphere. Towards the end, the theater was kept remarkably nice, but when you consider the much, much nicer 16-plex (also AMC) two blocks down the road, it’s pretty much a given.
One cool thing about this theater is that they weren’t afraid to let a movie run a little long — the Centennial Lakes was the only theater to still have “The Passion Recut” after the first week it ran, but it’ll have to remain a distant memory now that developers have decided to know the building down to add to the already-uppity shopping complex that blocks France Avenue of its roots. Remember the France Avenue Drive-In? Yeah, you may be the only one. I will post when they finally knock the building down.
Contributed by
Jesse Hoheisel
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Recent comments (view all 10 comments)
Centennial Lakes bowed after Burnhaven, but 2 years before Mall of America. It’s opening highlighted the Centennial Lakes Business Park & General Cinema had several special events in its first open year.
A no-frills GCC design, Cinemeccanica projector heads, Dolby & Kintek stereo, later upgraded to digital & a few 70mm titles played there throughout the early nineties. Not always the theatre with a good reputation for presentation quality, AMC’s acquisition of GCC, the construction of the new Eden Prarie multiplex & later the AMC buyout of the Megastar 16-plex in Southdale were all reasons for its closing. 24 AMC screens within a mile of each other seemed to be too excessively saturating the Edina market.
I’m surprised to see the ‘generic’ and ‘no frills’ opinions of the place. Admittedly not unique like the Lagoon or Uptown, I remember Centennial being described by many as the nicest megaplex in the Twin Cities until the Mall of America opened. Of course both were soon made obselete by the stadium seating construction binge of the late 90s. But for a while it was THE place to go.
Although this cinema has been closed for sometime, it has now been razed. Plans are to build a retail centre on the property.
Yeah, in the ‘90s it was the spot. Unique? Maybe not, but the presentation was nice, and if you lived in the southwest corner of Minneapolis and it’s suburbs this was the place to go until Southdale opened up.
In the early 90’s – it was state of the art. Saw many good first runs there. T2 for example looked and sounded great at Centennial Lakes.
I worked for General Cinema Corperation at the old Southdale Cinema prior to moving to Centennial Lakes 8. The 1st showing at the “closed” Grand Opening was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 70mm. Awesome!!
Great times made better with good people!
I left the company in 1992 and had not been back until I saw Pirates of the Caribbean in 2003 after GCC had been bought out by AMC.
Too bad it closed…
Here is a photo of the theater taken at the time it first opened in 1990:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/a2z_mpls/3495409557/
It was demolished several years ago and a new retail development now occupies the site.
Jesse, I think GCC’s popcorn and concessions were in line with other theatres.I was enjoyed running a GCC operation.First Class.
Its still amazing to me that a theatre built new in 1990 is already gone.I can see that the theatre might not make it,but it seems a building that new could have been used for something else.
It might be in a crummy part of town like Regency Exchange 8 a GCC operation that lasted a little over 10 years.