Oakville Town Centre Cinemas
320 North Service Road W.,
Oakville,
ON
L6M 2R7
320 North Service Road W.,
Oakville,
ON
L6M 2R7
1 person
favorited this theater
The Oakville Town Centre Cinemas were operated by Famous Players and opened on Friday June 23rd 1989.
The cinema had six screens with a total seating capacity of 1,717 and instead of numbering them they went by names: Alto-Bijou-Majestic-Olympia-Palace-Rio
On opening day there were three features playing “Batman”, “Dead Poets Society”, and “Honey I Shrunk The Kids”.
The cinema was located at the west end of the Oakville Town Centre shopping centre which has been renamed Dorval Crossing. It was closed on July 19, 2001.
A Staples store now occupies the unit where the cinema had been.
Contributed by
William Mewes
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Recent comments (view all 10 comments)
A picture from 1989 can be found here.
http://silenttoronto.com/?p=387
For some reason my URLs no longer create links but you can copy and paste the URL into your browser.
Thank You for posting the link! I have figured it out now.
1989 Photo
I’ve uploaded the photo in the “Photos” section. Please share any more info of pictures of the theatre if you have it! :)
One of my all time favourites of all the “sixplexes” Famous Players built across the country in the 80s. Especially loved the lobby which was like a town setting, with it’s sky blue ceiling and each cinema with it’s different name on different marquees and signs to look like a main street somewhere. Very imaginative. Too bad it didn’t last much much longer, but soon the multiplex/curved screen/stadium seating hit and this was a goner. Although the Cineplex Odeon built around the same time also in Oakville still survives as the Encore Oakville Mews.
I think about this place all the time. I wish it was still the theatre – I’d make the trip back into Oakville just for it if it was! If anyone has any more pictures, or memories, please share!
I so love the interior of this theatre. I actually didn’t remember it until I saw the photo here but it’s the most creative thing I’ve ever seen in a cinema’s design. Did Famous Players do this “street of theatres” design in any of their other theatres, and if so, are any of them still around?
No other Famous Players complex had quite the true “street of theatres” look like this one did, but the ones still around and in current operation are the Kildonan Place Cinemas in Winnipeg and the Esplanade 6 in North Vancouver. The stadium seating craze in the late nineties unfortunately rendered a lot of these cinemas obsolete well before their time.
The original auditorium names and seat counts at opening were: Majestic 451 seats, Olympia 298 seats, Bijou 254 seats & Alto, Palace & Rio with 238 seats in each one.
This theatre opened on June 23, 1989, with “Batman” in the Majestic and Bijou theatres, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” in the Palace and Olympia theatres, and “Dead Poets Society” in the Alto and Rio theatres. By opening, it had Dolby SR in all theatres.
This cinema’s final day was July 19, 2001. Its final movies were A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, The Fast and The Furious, Cats & Dogs, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Pootie Tang, Scary Movie 2, and Shrek (only one without digital sound). I believe it failed because of heavy competition with AMC Winston Churchill and SilverCity Mississauga nearby.