South County Cinema
St. Louis,
MO
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The South County Cinema was originally a one-screener, opening in 1966, but in the late-1970’s was divided into a twin. General Cinemas also had another theater that was 100% identical in design – the Northland Cinema, in North St. Louis County.
As late as 1985 the South County was still drawing big crowds. Around that time, Wehrenberg opened a new multi-screen complex just a few miles down Lemay Ferry Road, which began to sap audiences from South County Cinema.
Finally, in 1987, General Cinemas decided to open an 8 screen theater across the street, the Lindbergh 8. The new cinema did poor business for a few years, before becoming a bargain house with 2 dollar tickets and second run shows. The South County Cinema closed in 1988 and was later demolished to create more parking for an adjacent mall.
Contributed by
Norman Plant
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Recent comments (view all 42 comments)
For those posters on here who worked at South County Cinema…or any other GCC theater for that matter, check out this video from YouTube (no, I didn’t post it). I originally found out about this from a post in the “General Cinema Locations” thread on cinematour.com…it’s a training video for ticketing cashiers for GCC’s Montclair Plaza Cinema in Montclair, CA. Enjoy!!
View link
Sorry JAlex, you are mistaken. The CVS is located where the 905 store once stood, later replaced by a Western Auto. Pollo Loco is where the McDonald’s was once located. Then the outlot where Macaroni Grill was located.
I drank a lot of Lotta Lemon in my days at GCC.Wish we would had COKE.
I suppose that another chain might want to go head-to-head with the Wehrenberg Ronnie’s 20 by building a megaplex closer to South County Mall; after all, the AMC operation competes with Wehrenberg’s Galaxy in Chesterfield. Except for the discount Keller 8, the area does seem underscreened. However, South County may not be seen as econonmically attractive. I do not think that there is any doubt that AMC will eventually close its Crestwood theaters, and that in time the whole Crestwood Plaza will be redeveloped just as the Jamestown Mall will be soon.
I think AMC would definitely move in this area. There are no AMC theaters in South county anyway (or at least that part of SoCo). It would greatly help if they built screens that were attached to the mall. Great idea. And yes, this is very underscreened.
Also, I believe it was Wehrenberg that bought out GCC in StL
Needy: You are correct, Wehrenberg bought out the remaining GCC theaters back in 1990 (I think). However, that was before GCC officially went out of business. When that happened, AMC acquired the remaining GCC theaters in the rest of the country.
Actually, Needy, my last post should have said Wehrenberg bought out the remaining GCC theaters IN ST. LOUIS in 1990. There were still GCC theaters in other parts of the country, as I discovered when I moved to Southern California in 1991.
Also, I apologize for my poor spelling in my original post. This editor started acting strange by not scrolling down once I came to the bottom of the box. I’m using the Firefox browser…could that have something to do with that happening?
Quite possibly; Firefox tends to slow down on my Mac the longer I have been in it. I think it builds a bigger cache of stored previous pages than some other browsers, As soon as I notice the slowdown, I shut it down an reopen it; that seems to help.
I worked there from 1976 to 1979. Had a great time, especially after hours!