Cinema architect Frank Dagdagan created three Japan theaters and one Hong Kong location for AMC Entertainment International including this entry for the circuit’s second theater in Japan, the AMC Nakama 16. The 16-screen, 57,000 square foot theatre was designed with 2,600-seats and at the time of opening was the largest theatre in Japan. Located at the Daiei-Nakama shopping center groundbreaking was late in 1997 with an opening in November 1998.
The auditorium design gave moviegoers an unobstructed view of the screen and had the AMC LoveSeats with retractable cupholder armrests. All auditoriums will feature Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) and the High Impact Theatre System (HITS) with compound-curved screens. The AMC Canal City 13 theatre in Fukuoka, Japan, was the first AMC theater in Japan theater launching in April 1996.
In 1998 and 1999, announcements that two new-build art theaters were coming to town in the Landmark West Village and the Angelika – Dallas at Mockingbird Station. Dallas had never had a new-build art cinema – though many converted spaces such as the UA Ciné and Silver Cinema’s Inwood Theater both of which were operating at the time of these announcements. And the Anglelika was in good hands with veteran art cinema architect Frank Dagdagan who had done the circuit’s first Texas theater in Houston.
So this was exiciting despite the fact that the projects fell months and months behind schedule. At Mockingbird Station, the $100 million, 10-acre business plus living concept was delayed by bad weather. At the Landmark West Village, Landmark’s bankruptcy forced the project to stall out and was endangered. The Angelika finally had a soft launch on July 27, 2001 with Deep Ellum Film, Music, Arts and Noise Inc. (DEFMAN) presenting free screenings of independent films, “George Washington” and “L.I.E.” The theater then had more free soft launch screenings until it grand opening on August 3, 2001. The theater’s film experience was an instant success and spelled doom for the nearby UA Ciné as well as the Granada Theater.
In addition to art cinema, the theater hosted many major film festivals including USA Film Festival, USA Kidfest, Jewish Film festival screenings, Dallas International Film Festival, Dallas Black Film Festival, and Vistas Hispanic film festival among them.
Downstairs, however, the downstairs cafe by Lisa Kelley featuring risotto cakes , pounded pork medallions and sautéed chicken breast didn’t click with the audience and would soon be downgraded to coffee bar and prepared sandwiches and desserts. Kelley left in less than four months and another chef tried without much success to make the theater a restauarant. And more competition for the art cinema dollar came when new buyers took on the flatlined Landmark West Village opening as the Magnolia Theater in January of 2002. And Angelika would open a West Plano theatre within the DFW market. As of the mid-2010s, all three theaters were operating as full-time art cinemas.
Announced in 2002 as part of the 23-acre Legacy Town Center in West Plano, Angelika’s second Dallas area art theater was set to open in 2003. This was architect Frank Dagdagan’s fourth theater for Angelika. He said that the theater has a bohemian aesthetic with unique art and showcasing raw materials including concrete, steel, two-story wall of glass, wood, marble and bamboo. Like other Angelika’s a large crystal chandelier was featured with this one accented with blue neon. The focal point upon entering is the grand staircase leading both to concession/café/ lounge area and the auditoriums. Black-box style auditoriums featured Dolby Digital sound, stadium seating, retractable armrests with cup holders at each seat, and “wall-to-wall” screens. The two largest houses had all-leather seating.
The delayed theater had a soft launch with the Dallas South Asian Film Festival’s repertory screening of “East is East” on June 21, 2004 and then having its official grand opening on June 23, 2004 with “Fahrenheit 9/11” playing on three of the five screens. The theater was seen as progress for moviegoers not only being Collin County’s first art house but in 1990, the Mayor of Plano kept the film, “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” from being shown in the city saying “I can… understand if you show it in Dallas, Texas. But Plano is a community of suburban families.”
With the AMC Stonebriar just to the North along with the and the wildly successful Cinemark West Plano just to the South, the cinematic dollars were heading North as West Plano / Frisco became DFW’s hottest place to watch new films: mainstream and art, included.
Phil Isley Enterprises opened the Granada Theater, its first in the Dallas market and eighth overall on January 16, 1946 with “Mildred Pierce”. Post-War Dallas saw the rise of new suburban movie theaters which would pressure some of the second-run theaters on downtown Dallas' theater row. The Raymond F. Smith architected theater had 950 seats and a tower with changing neon lights. Isley would soon take on the Rita Theater in East Dallas for its second theater. The Granada was community-minded with benefit screenings, church services, early children’s matinees with yo-yo contests, and some local-interest film choices. It had a thin sliver of the population with the Arcadia to the south, the Gay turned Coronet to the west and joined in October of 1946 by the nearby Wilshire Theater. But Isley was up to the task running a consistent and neighborhood-centered operation.
Almost twenty years into Isley’s operation, he sold the Granada and 12 other theaters in his portfolio to John H. Rowley for $1.5 million. Rowley had just sold out of his Rowley United as that circuit would operate as the southwest region of United Artists (UA). The Granada would be the first group in Rowley’s newly-christened and short-lived Big Tex Theaters before being subsumed by United Artists. Under UA opeation, the Granada lost its way as a number of theaters on the periphery of the Central Zone in Dallas struggled.
Within the C-Zone, newer theaters like the UA Ciné, Medallion, and Northpark I & II got the new films. Veteran Highland Park’s Village got the family films and the Wilshire did great with road shows and first-run bookings. The Arcadia, Coronet, Knox St., Lakewood and Granada flailed to stay relevant just outside of the C-Zone. Pitched as an occasional under-carrier completing UA Ciné roadshow runs including “Far From the Madding Crowd” and “Funny Girl,” UA positioned the Granada as an arthouse and having a big hit with “The Producers.” The start was so good that UA switched names of the veteran Avenue Theater in East Dallas to the Guild Theater to rebrand there as art also.
The Guild failed with art and a company called Guild Art Theater would sublease and reposition the Guild as a porn theater which was very successful. The Granada, too, was failing as the Northpark III & IV came online adding new options for moviegoers. The Guild subleased the Granada from UA taking down posters for the MGM classical musicals in February of 1975 and abruptly switching it to an X with XXX second-show, “hardcore” porn. (The Fine Arts in Snider Plaza had the porno chic single-X audience so the Granada went for a different audience.)
Local shop owners weren’t too thrilled and the police raided theater during its very first week. A petition signed by 1,400 people tried to end the porn and picketers protested. The city put enough pressure on the theater – as well as the nearby adult operator, the Coronet Theater— including raids and daily fines to force a change. Guild Art would sub-sublease the theater to William Smart and a partner in late August 1975 who changed the theater back to a discount house. The first-time operators signed on with New American Cinema – which vacated the Festival Theater – and Zoo-FM, a local rock station which showed music-centric midnight shows during that period. The protests and raids had stopped but so had a viable flow of patrons. The Granada brand was tarnished and the sub-run $1 concept failed within five months. In March of 1976, the Guild came back playing adult films. The Guild left the building under scrutiny and UA subleased the theater to an operator who changed the theater to sub-run discount in November of 1976. Those operators reportedly walked away from the theater January 13, 1977 failing to make rent and UA locked up the property and the lease finally expired. UA left the property.
The next operators spent $50,0000 in the spring and summer of 1977 to convert the Granada to a live event space reducing to 600 seats. The theater opened with Kenny Rogers and soon featuring Muddy Waters with some other impressive acts booked. The venue failed quickly and some promised events at the end didn’t make it to the stage. The changes — including expanded stage — would serve the building well down the line but it was hard to convince lower Greenville residents saddened as the theater was vacant for the second time that year and a sixth-month period into 1978. It had a very uncertain future as theaters including the Esquire and the nearby Wilshire were among the single screen post-War suburban theaters in Dallas being demolished.
But operator Movie Inc. out of New Mexico took on the other neighborhood, former-art-turned-porn-theater in the Coronet creating an oft sold out repertory and cult film establishment. Having just 309 seats, Movie Inc. needed a bigger place so the Edison moved to the Granada Theater on April 20, 1978. The Granada held twice as many people and was more of a nightspot for the target audience. The Edison ran for about a year but with home video coming into vogue, that market was challenging and the Edison ended. A new operator came in who tried eclectic fare and another operator tried an Edison-like movie club concept with 20 repertory films for $25. That didn’t work. In February of 1984, Bill Neal ran the theater running repertory. His last screening was on Oct. 31, 1986 with “The Tingler.” The neighborhood turned out in force with “Save the Granada” signs and a petition with 2,000 signatures opposing the theater’s closing. Times had changed in ten years when picketers tried to close the then-adult house.
The next operator was Keith McKeague and John Appleton of Great Concepts who residents told to not create “another” restaurant, nightclub or bar in the Granada. They launched the Granada Cinema ‘n’ Drafthouse with beer as an option while watching second-run movies. Replacing the old rows of seats with dining tables though decreasing the house to 400 seats proved to be a winner. In 1992, Brian Schultz took on the Granada forming Granada Entertainment. In 1997, the Granada reported $2 million in revenue. They parlayed that into the purchase and redesign of a second location, the former UA Prestonwood Creek on Belt Line Road which would have a full kitchen and play first-run films. In 1999, the original Granada changed to first-run films. With competition due from the new Angelika, the Granada closed at the end of March 2001. Schultz’s fledgling Granada Entertainment circuit would soon become the dynamic, multi-state Studio Movie Grill circuit that blossomed in the early 21st Century.
In early 2002, new operators refurbished the Granada taking it back to live concerts including Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Steve Winwood, and Peter Tork of the Monkees. And the theater had football viewing, Oscars parties and even brought cinema classics back showing on the rooftop. As the theater was approaching its 70th anniversary, it was just as vibrant an entertainment spot deftly intertwined with its neighborhood as when it had opened. The Granada proved to be quite the survivor in Dallas’ entertainment history.
In April of 1988, PBA Development Inc., an affiliate of Cinemark Theatres, purchased 8.6 acres from Trammell Crow at the entrance to the 1,000-acre Westchester development at Carrier Parkway and I-20 in Grand Prairie for a 12-screen theater complex. A new theater, it was surmized, would attract people from Arlington, Grand Prairie, DeSoto and possibly South Dallas. On March 9, 1990, the multiplex opened following the previous fall’s opening of the circuit’s Vista Ridge 14 in Lewisville. The theater was a big success and would eventually attract competition.
United Artists decided to challenge Cinemark in three zones: Lewisville, Garland and Grand Prairie. Patterning its Grand Prairie theater after its UA Lakepointe 10 in Lewisville opened in December of 1994, the circuit opened its UA Grand Prairie 10 on August 24, 1995 at 510 Westchester Parkway seating 2,550. Two theaters had 490 seats featuring THX sound systems with all houses having DTS digital stereo. Opening features included Lord of Illusions, The Show, The Amazing Panda Adventure, and Desperado. UA would leave Lewisville while Cinemark downgraded its Garland location to sub-run discount status. That left Cinemark and UA Grand Prairie continuing to compete for clearances for more than 20 years. In the age of the megaplex, these two were among the longest-running same-zone challenge business situations in the DFW area.
AMC would open its new-build AMC at the Parks in Arlington just to the West but these two theaters just kept trucking past their 25th and 20th anniversaries looking virtually unchanged since their openings.
In October of 1995, a Dallas development company announced the 100,000 square foot 5,200 seat 20-screen Cinemark theater project on a 23-acre site just north of the northeast corner of Parker Road and Dallas North Tollway. The larger project extending to the corner would be completed by that development company twenty years later but the Cinemark project, itself, would come on in just over a year once residents’ concerns were addressed by the city council.
The circuit called its Tinseltown USA Plano theater it flagship location as the company would move its headquarters to a neighboring office building. Launching December 20, 1996, the all stadium-seating auditoria ranged in size from 200 to 600 seats each with multichannel sound. An additional Iwerks motion-simulator ride screen had 16 seats opening with “The Red Rock Run” though would be excised once the novelty wore thin. An arcade area —– featured at virtually all Cinemark theaters – fell into controversy when a city rule prohibiting arcades within the tollway corridor was enacted. The arcade would ultimately be replaced by a lounge when the theater was redesigned.
TInseltwon Plano would immediately become the DFW area’s second highest grossing theater behind only the AMC Grand and both AMC and Cinemark would take the momentum to expand in the megaplex era knocking out multiplex-centric General Cinema and counterpunch UA and Loews/Sony in the DFW market. In 1998, Tinseltown USA Plano surpassed the Grand as the highest grossing theater in DFW. And a second Cinemark Plano megaplex, the Legacy, on US-75 delivered stellar results upon its opening in June of 1999.
The Tinseltown USA became an incubator of concepts as the executives could walk over and see the results of concepts. Sneak previews sometimes with stars in attendance took place at the theater. Its moniker would be changed to the Cinemark West Plano and XD and received an incredible makeover with huge self-service concession area, Starbuck’s coffee, a Cinemark Extreme Digital Cinema screen (XD) — the circuit’s first in 2009, a party area next to the XD screen, and would convert from 35mm film to DCP servers projecting digital films and special satellite-fed events including classic film series. In 2014/5, the theater would be joined by eight restaurants built just to the south becoming a desitnation point for foodies and movie fans. Thanks to constant attention and innovative concepts, along with a stellar location, the theater looked to have a vibrant future heading into the 2020s.
For more than 35 years, Garland residents could enjoy drive-in movies at 3159 S. Garland Road. But as the home video era came into being, it was out with the Apollo Drive-In and in with the Wal-Mart 24-hour concept store, the Hypermart which opened at the former drive-in’s spot in 1989. But less than a mile away, movie lovers of Garland were delighted when a 60,000 square foot, 15-screen behemoth known as the Cinemark Hollywood U.S.A. was announced in 1992 just off of I-635 and Shiloh Road. Groundbreaking took place on June 11, 1992 with Cinemark mascot Front Row Joe, Garland’s Mayor Bob Smith, and others. The city teamed up with Cinemark to combine forces on a massive 800-space parking lot which would be used by Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) users during the daytime and moviegoers by night. The fact was that nothing was small or understated about the Cinemark Hollywood U.S.A. as it would become the largest megaplex outside of California when it launched at the end of 1992.
The theater opened on December 18, 1992 playing “Home Alone 2” as the first of 14 features. Its lobby featured neon palm trees on the west, a massive concession area, a neon Sunset Boulevard street sign over the arcade, and a Mama Rugi’s pizzeria with large seating area. There was also a 7’-by-7’ (3 monitor by 3 monitor) video screen featuring trailers and live video. That monitor wall would be about the only casualty over the first 30 years of the theater’s operation as the theater remained remarkably consistent (other than two interior concession stands which were retained but not used for many years).
Nothing was subtle in the purple, green and orange color scheme inside or the well-lit ticket area outside which was trying to conjure up Hollywood’s past with homages to Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson, James Dean, Marlene Dietrich among them. Inside, lit frames of classic Hollywood stars were found next to the entrances of the theaters including theaters dedicated to Bogey and the Duke. But on opening night, people were blown away by the talking Front Row Joe trash can which had a variety of random phrases when trash was dispensed with. 23 years later, the trash can amazingly was still around though Joe’s trash-talking were apparently behind it.
The first competition for the USA came on May 21, 1996 when United Artists opened its superior Galaxy just an exit or two to the west of the Cinemark theater. The two battled it out for the best clearances for the next ten years. But with its six THX-certified auditoria — two with 80' screens — the UA Galaxy was a destination complex. More competition came in March of 1998, the mega-large AMC Mesquite 30 opened to the south also along I-635. With all stadium-seating, the megaplex was draining business from both Garland theaters.
Then in 2005, Garland got the high-tech AMC Firewheel 18. The Cinemark Garland was aging quickly as superior theaters were easily reachable via highway and the circuit finally decided to downgrade the theater after 15-years of first-run service to a pretty awesome sub-run discount house. The theater would temporarily drop to just 14-screens as the theater leased out theater one to a non-profit house of worship. It would also try Spanish-subtitled American films for a period to reach the fast-growing Hispanic population in the area. Both concepts didn’t work out and the theater continued as a mainstream dollar house into the mid-2010s. Its biggest change came when the theater was able to make the conversion from scratchy second-run 35mm prints to all-digital projection allowing for 3D exhibition and better quality presentation. While many early 1990s theaters had changed hands or closed altogether, the Cinemark remained vaiable as it neared its 25th anniversary.
In 1983, the fast-gowing Dallas suburb of Carrollton had just surpassed 50,000 citizens and projected to exclipse 80,000 by 1990. In 1970, it had just 13,855 people and was served by a twin-screen drive-in, the Rebel, and an old downtown movie theater, the Plaza. In Carrollton’s growth spurt, the Trinity Mills / Old Denton Road would receive an astonishing 21 movie screens. It would start with General Cinema’s Furneaux Creek Village 7. That would prove so successful that the firm would plop down another theater caddy corner to the Furneaux called the GCC Carrollton Towne Centre 6 – generally known simply as the GCC Carrollton 6. And Cinemark would create its Movies 8 at Trinity Mills positioning it as a sub-run discount house.
Starting with Furneaux Creek, developer Paul Broadhead announced the $12 million Furneaux Creek Village late in 1982. General Cinema Corp. and three restaurants were first announced with the GCC Furneaux Creek Cinemas 7 launching on December 9, 1983. The theater was at 2625 Old Denton Rd. It opened with Yentl, Christine, Sudden Impact, Never Say Never Again, and a Smurfs film. Despite limited street visibility, the theater was an immediate hit as people loved the dining and shopping alternatives including book store in the cozy Furneaux Creek. The shopping center had a subdued architectural feel and the GCC cinema used understated and dark color palette creating a calm and abnormally darker than average lobby environment. GCC would use its business strategy to plop down another multiplex where one was doing brisk business. It had done this at the Town East Mall in Mesquite, Northpak Center and Redbird Mall in the DFW area.
Caddy corner to Furneaux Creek Village, a 182,000 square foot, non-descript shopping strip called Carrollton Towne Centre was announced in 1986. GCC would take a well-hidden 25,175 square foot spot tucked away in the back of that strip. The theater was brighter than its neighbor. That said, the arcitecturally-bland Carrollton 6 matched the benign shopping center launching July 24, 1987. The theater had mediocre sound options and wasn’t a destination theater by any stretch. But GCC had tight control of the Carrollton zone with its 13 screens caddy corner from one another. Success was rather short-lived.
Furneaux Creek’s creator Broadhead had now moved on to chairman of upstart movie circuit, Cinemark. He and LeRoy Mitchell made what they called a “risky move” by encroaching on the Carrollton zone. In 1989, the three-year old circuit decided to launch an 8-screen subrub discount house walking distance from the Furneaux Creek shopping center at 1130 W. Trinity Mills Rd. The city had gone from one screen in 1983 to 21 screens when the Cinemark opened Nov. 10, 1989. And the risk was possibly too great as all three theaters would fall on very hard times fairly quickly.
Just to the North in Lewisville, less than five miles away on Interstate 35, a retail nexus would form around the Vista Ridge Mall – the DFW area’s newest and largest mall which opened in October of 1989. It included a 12-screen first-run Cinemark theater as multiplexes were giving way to megaplexes of ten or more screens. Within five years, the Lewisville zone would have 30 first-run screens and one discount house. The better-built megaplex-era theaters would erode film audiences from the multiplex-era Carrollton theaters. Also, population shifts in the 1990s saw a surge in Asian residents and the marketplace would alter Furneaux Creek’s target demographic. In short, the three Carrollton theaters would all be at the wrong place at the wrong time each failing to reach the end of their original lease periods.
The GCC Carrollton was the first casualty closing in September of 1998 as GCC focused on its Furneaux Creek operation. The GCC Carrollton would have the distinction of showing “Simon Birch” as among its last offerings. Birch would close the iconic General Cinema NorthPark I theater less than a month later. Things weren’t any better for Cinemark as it closed up shop at its Movies 8 in July of 2000, a rare misstep for the firm. And the third and final theater in the Carrollton zone would drop just three months later.
GCC was doomed with its multiplex-centric business model. The GCC Furneaux Creek got a vote of confidence on October 5, 2000 when four GCCs were shuttered leaving just the Galleria, the Furneaux, and the newly-built Irving Mall 14 in the DFW area. Two weeks later, GCC rethought the plan and closed the Galleria and Furneaux Creek. The last show was “Bait” with no patrons for the other six shows as the theater closed quickly and quietly before the evening’s posted showtimes could run.
It was hard to imagine that the Carrollton zone had gone down so quickly. Star Cinema took on the Furneaux Creek very briefly openning in November of 2000 with Little Nicky and six other features. But that operation closed quickly as Star Cinema moved to the former GCC Town East and then, finally, to the former AMC Towne Crossing before surrendering to the megaplex era. A hastily-created Cinema Grill by a fledgling circuit of the same name came into the Furneaux Creek basically removing rows of seats to put in tables for full-kitchen service movies with meals. That launched May 8, 2002 but was a quick failure.
The Movies 8 became a non-profit Covenant Church. The Furneaux Creek was completely gutted revealing just a giant hand-painted General Cinema logo on its back wall. It was converted into a vibrant Korean market. And this listing for the GCC Carrollton Towne Center was home to a gym which failed. The former Carrollton 6 was vacant for long stretches prior to and after being a gym, in part, due to the hidden nature of the building.
In the 1930s, George Myers was everything to the, then, small town of Carrollton, Texas. The grocer/mayor/postmaster showed outdoor films before carving out a space in his downtown grocery store with post office to show indoor films at 1110 W. Main Street. The show-store was purchased by A.R. Lowery and his wife, Vera who replaced the benches with seating at the Plaza Theater. Their 8-year old son, John, made news when he made it to the final chapter of a western serial with a broken leg. Not long after A.R. Lowrey passed away, Vera and John, would decide to operate a larger theater, the “new” Plaza opening December 23, 1949 as the town had surged to just over 1,000 residents.
The Raymond Smith architected facility would prove to be well-built as the building was virtually unchanged over the next 45 years of operation. The original projector made it through the entire run of the building. Carrollton would grow from 1,000 residents to 93,000 in the 1990s. In a 55-year family theatrical career, the Lowery’s with their two Plaza Theaters would survive competition from the nearby twin-screen drive-in, the Rebel, as well as three multiplexes created in suburban Carrollton. Vera would continue working at the theater until age 92 and son, John, finally closed the theater – operating as a sub-run discount dollar house — with “The Mask” as the theater was reaching its 45th anniversary. The veteran operator sold the theater to a church-backed group who would convert the theater into a live performance venue.
A marker outside of the theater commemorates the Lowrey’s 45-year operation at the Plaza. Continuing in 1985 as the Plaza Music Theatre, the Grapevine Opry entertained locals until 2002. Two local businessmen took on the Plaza renaming it the Plaza Arts Center. It has space for local artists to display work regularly and hosted some events and local events. The Plaza has continued to the mid-2010s where the facility continues to entertain Carrollton in the city’s downtown looking almost unchanged after more than 65 years.
In 1985, the Herring Group of Dallas and Homart Development Co. announced that they would develop DFW’s largest shopping mall, a 1.4 million square foot center known as Vista Ridge. The mall opened in October of 1989 and the Cinemark wasn’t far behind opening that same month. The mall theater was glitzy and gaudy resplendent in purple, red, and green neon tubing. A 3x3 CRT monitor bank had 10 minutes of movie previews and then three minutes of live video where patrons could see themselves larger than life. The theater had an arcade area, large concession stand, and two larger theaters for the biggest films that week. The only competition was a ten-screen theater up the road which became a discount house in the Garden Park Shopping Center.
The theater was an amazing hit. James Terry McIlvain signed autographs during a screening of “Pure Country.” Scott Bakula showed up of “Quantum Leap” fame and signed autographs. And the theater was doing such stellar business that AMC Theatres announced in 1993 it would build its first ever 20-screen theater across the street from Vista Ridge Mall. While that project was dropped as AMC turned its attention to its AMC Grand Project further south on Interstate 35, two new theaters opened across from each other with Trans-Texas’ Vista Ridge 8 and UA’s Lakepointe 10 both opening the same day on December 16, 1994.
Cinemark would take on the Vista Ridge 8 converting it to a sub-run, discount house. The competing Super Saver discount house in Garden Park would close. But in December of 2000, Rave Motion Pictures would open its first ever theater with the high-tech Hickory Creek 16 just to the North on I-35. It was game on and Cinemark’s property began to age quickly compared to the Rave.
Instead of trying to refresh the 17 year old property and do a full digital conversion, Cinemark created a new build Cinemark 15 at Vista Ridge Mall opening with a soft launch on September 20, 2006. That theater would supplant the Movies 12 which remained empty for some time.
The Studio Movie Grill Lewisville was originally going to be AMC’s first 20-screen super-megaplex. When Vista Ridge Mall opened in 1989, Lewisville received its second 10-plus screen theater with Cinemark Theater’s Vista Ridge 12 inside the mall. Because the shopping complex drew people from a wide circle including Lewisville, Flower Mound, Carrollton, Coppell, Lake Dallas, Corinth and Highland Village, there was room for another theater. So in January 1993, AMC announced an exterior multiplex across the highway down from Corporate Drive that would be a 48,000 sqaure feet 20-screen multiplex the likes of which the DFW area hand’t seen.
In May of 1993, AMC turned its attention to a 24-screen AMC Stemmons Crossroads project that would become the game-changing AMC Grand 24 opening in 1995. AMC walked away from the 20-screen Lewisville project leaving an opening for another operator to build a megalplex in that spot. United Artists stepped up with a smaller-sized concept theater that would serve as a blueprint for its expansion within DFW over the next several years.
UA concentrated its 1994-1997 growth with 9-to-11 screen builds that were more destination theaters then the generic, neighborhood 8-plexes that it had built in the early to mid-1990s. And the UA Lakepointe 10 would be its first scheduled to open followed by a similar facility in Grand Prairie (1995), a grander location near Garland (1996), and two in Fort Worth (1997). Meanwhile, Trans-Texas announced a simultaneous project on the opposite side of the freeway. Trans-Texas' 8-screen theater was of more modest scale and it was a race to see which would open first.
To demonstrate that it was out of the business of building generic boxy theaters, UA got a waiver from the City of Lewisville to include a laser lighting system that would adorn the main entrance and be visible to the busy adjoinging highway. The UA Lakepointe 10’s translucent theater canopy was designed by Runyon Architects and Associates. It was 10 feet tall and 100 feet long projecting 14 color patterns that could be set to music. The UA theater launched December 16, 1994 with features including Speechless, Dumb and Dumber, Drop Zone and Disclosure though would not have its official grand opening celebration until January 26, 1995. Trans-Texas' Vista Ridge 8-plex opened across the street on December 16, 1994 with sub-runs and would go first run then back to sub-run discount when it became part of the Cinemark circuit.
The first shoe to drop in the Lewisville area was the first multiplex in the Rand/Hollywood/Silver Cinema 10-screen discount house in the Garden Park Shopping Center. But UA ran into financial difficulty as a circuit as the century closed while others easily outflanked the chain’s 10-screen effort. Rave Motion Pictures opened a state-of-the-art high tech megaplex just to the north of the Lakepointe opening in 2000 which took much of the non-mall, non-discount moviegoing audience with it. With Cinemark scheduled to open a brand new facility at Vista Ridge Mall, and a 14-plex just to the North in Denton, the writing was on the wall. UA closed the Lakepointe and many other theaters across DFW and around the country.
But all was not lost as Studio Movie Grill repositioned the Lakepointe as a movie and dining event place called the Studio Movie Grill Lewisville opening May 2007. The theater was in a contentious zone with AMC opening its Highland Village theater to the west in December of that year, Obviously with many theaters within exits of each other (the Vista Ridge Mall 15 Lewisville, the Lewisville 8 discount house, Cinemark 14 in Denton, the Silver Cinemas Golden Triangle, and the Rave Hickory Creek 16), SMG had its work cut out for it. Redesigning the complex as an 8-plex with full kitchen, the theater pulled off the task with aplomb keeping the theater relevant into the mid-2010s and beyond.
The Trans-Texas Vista Ridge Movies 8 opened at an inopportune time for the fledgling circuit. Across the highway, United Artists opened its far superior Lakepointe 10 on the same day that the T-T Vista Ridge was having its grand opening celebration. The Vista Ridge had scheduled sub-run films for the public to get a free look at facility. But with competition just yards away from the Cinemark Vista Ridge 12 inside of the Vista Ridge Mall, the UA Lakepointe and by decade’s end, Rave Motion Pictures just to the North, Trans-Texas bailed and Cinemark took on the struggling 8-plex. It repositioned it as a sub-run discount house. With the departure of the Rand/Hollywood/Silver Cinema 10-screen discount house in the Garden Park Shopping Center, this theater had found its audience continuing strong into the mid-2010s.
United Artists Circuits purchased 9.5 acres near the southeast corner of Jupiter Road and LBJ Freeway in northeast Dallas to launch a destination theater that eventually opened May 21, 1996 called the Galaxy. While much of the attention was going to 24 and 30 screen megaplexes of the era, UA was more conservative building 9-11 screen complexes. UA built its Lakepointe 10 theater in Lewisville opening in December 1994 and would build a similar facility in Grand Prarie (Aug.1995) along with two Fort Worth complexes opening in 1997 with the Eastchase 9 and the Fossil Creek 11.
Much like the UA Grand Prairie, the circuit was going after a contemporary Cinemark multiplex in the Hollywood USA 14/15. With screen count already in favor of the established Cinemark property, UA spent more on this property than the afforementioned theaters. The costs of the Galaxy sailed past $12 million with two huge 750 seat auditoria with 76.5 foot wide screens and 50-foot high ceilings affectionately called the 80 foot screens, eclipsing the 75 foot screens at the CInemark 17. The two auditoria had the second largest screens next to only the outdoor Astro Drive-In.
The theater made a statement, THX certification was found in six auditoria where digital sound was vibrant. There was stadium seating with rocking-chair padded seats in all houses, something that UA had eschewed in the past. A crazy large dual-sided concession area, gaming area, two additional concession stands close to theaters 5 & 9 – the largest houses, and a 38-seat Showscan ride simulator theater that rounded out the technologically innovative theater.
Opening night was wild on May 21, 1996. With eight theaters ready for usage, Mission: Impossible was screened on each screen a day before its actual opening and the theater attracted sell out audiences. People showed up, they filled the auditorium and went on to the next auditorium. The theater made $22,500 in ticket revenue selling out all shows until 11:45p.
Because of the size of the large screens, Star Wars fans camped out at the Galaxy as members of “Countdown Dallas” waited the highly anticipated 1999 film. The theater had many sell-outs and delivered the goods. The Galaxy 9 would become the Galaxy 10 when the Showscan novelty house was converted into a small screen. UA all but vanquished its Cinemark competitor as the Hollywood USA was downgraded to sub-run dollar house status. UA had all the new clearances it wanted for new films.
But United Artists, itself, fell on hard times and the circuit dropped theater after theater in the area and around the country. Even the Countdown Dallas group abandoned the theater for 2002’s Phantom Menace sequel opting for the DLP-centric Cinemark Legacy. UA which once had theaters all over Dallas would be taken over by Regal and would have only the Galaxy after leaving the Plaza, the Keystone, the MacArthur Marketplace, and all of its multiplexes including the North Star in Garland. Regal didn’t do justice to the Galaxy as THX designation went away. The cash-strapped Regal chain didn’t do much over the next ten years to refresh the property and weekday audiences found the 900 slot parking lot with more new cars for the adjoining car dealership than patrons.
Meanwhile, AMC would upgrade its 30-screen Mesquite property with a IMAX-branded screen, a bar, fork-and-screen full-kitchen houses, and recliners. More people were drifting away from the Galaxy. But there was hope as in 2015, the theater would receive its first major refresh when recliner seating was announced in March of 2015 to come in time for the big summer films. Because Regal owned the theater instead of the former practice of leasing, it realized that the theater might have an opportunity to remain vibrant heading into the 2020s.
The $5 million, sub-run discount Starplex Mesquite Cinema 10 opened on July 27, 1996 at Highway 80 and Belt Line Road. On its opening weekend, films were free (Flipper, James and the Giant Peach, The Arrival, Heaven’s Prisoners, Celtic Pride, Dragonheart, Executive Decision, Toy Story, Homeward Bound 2, Truth About Cats & Dogs, and Primal Fear). Auditorium size ranged from 125 to 450 seats. The theater had DTS, Dolby Digital and SDDS at its opening with wall-to-wall screens. '
The theater was the cousin to the Starplex Irving which had also just opened. Tickets were $1 before 6 p.m. and $1.50 after 6 p.m. with bargain Tuesdays. Its nearest subrun discount competition would be from the Cinemark Big Town five miles away and AMC Towne Crossing four miles away. They would both go out of business in 1999 and 1998, respectively. The Starplex chain would later add a first-run theater in Forney just 11 miles away.
AMC built its first Mesquite multiplex in 1985 with its Towne Crossing 8. It was competing with nearby multiplexes by United Artists and two by General Cinema Corporation (GCC). With newer megaplexes coming into style, the circuits noticed a “migration” away from the aging Town East area multiplexes in 1995/6. In 1996, AMC announced a bombshell which would forever change moviegoing in the area and it was the AMC Mesquite 30.
The 6,360-seat AMC Mesquite 30 would be built on a 33-acre site at the confluence of Interstate 635 and U.S. Highway 80. Unlike many projects prior, AMC would own the land instead of leasing to give the project a bit more permanance than, say, its 24-screen Grand that it would open and then abandon upon the end of its 15-year lease. The 131,000-square-foot theater was one of three 30-screen behomeths along with Houston and L.A. and would soon be joined by a project in Grapevine. Plans for a stand-alone 30-screen Frisco theater were scrapped and later became the 24-screen AMC Stonebriar Mall.
The Mesquite AMC theater would be one exit removed from the Mesquite Championship Rodeo which was receiving a hotel and conference center while a country-western themed nightclub was being built. Befitting of the area, the AMC Mesquite 30 was designed with country western themes. Rest rooms had a rustic old west vibe and the northern concession stand was in the old west general store corridor while the other two were tropical rain forest and computer-centric concepts. A large circular courtyard was built around 18 ticket stands, almost unusable on the many hot days in Mesquite. Initial capacity for the auditroia ranged from 118 to 603 patrons. The project was delayed about eight months and actually opened more than three months after the Grapevine project which had opened in December of 1997. As a result, Mesquite employees were sent to train in the very similar Grapevine Mills 30.
Parking and security issues plagued the AMC Grand and the Mesquite had a different concept. Two golf carts and later Segways used by security guards would monitor the 6,000 car parking lot. And the most distant parking lot could be closed off on less busy weekdays. Launching on March 20, 1998, the impact of the mega-successful Mesquite 30 on the multiplexes just two exits away on I-635 was catastrophic. None would survive past the calendar year as AMC would shutter its own Towne Crossing 8, followed by the GCC Town East 6, the UA Town East 6, and the GCC Town East 5. In January of 1999, Cinemark would shutter its nearby dollar house leaving AMC as the only first-run circuit in the area. It was a competitive coup de grâce.
Even without serious competition, in June of 2009, the theater got its first major retrofit as it would retrofit its largest screen desginated as an IMAX experience auditroium. While these screens were derided by many as “faux Max” screens, they added branding and additional revenue to the location. But an even more grand retrofit occurred in 2013/2014 with AMC — now under Dalian Wanda Group — placed a lot of capital in refreshing theaters nationwide.
The Mesquite 30 was totally revamped becoming a hybrid facility with complete kitchen serving the dine-in “Fork & Screen” theaters, a new MacGuffins Bar area for use by patrons of the “Cinema Suites” reserved seating theaters generally with R-rated features, and some traditional general theaters where patrons brought in traditional snack bar food. Recliner seats greatly reduced overall seat count in the Fork & Screen and Cinema Suite houses. The main concession area received high-tech self-serve Coca-Cola mixing stations and Icee dispensers while the seldom-open auxiliary snack bars were closed. The concept launched February 20, 2014 and showed the theater’s dedication to keeping the property vibrant into the 2020s.
1995 was the start of the megaplex boom with the AMC Grand 24 getting the major attention but also with the UA Grand Prairie 10, the Loews Cityplace, and two 17-screen theaters by Cinemark with the Grapevine Tinseltown USA 17 and this theater, the Cinemark 17. Cinemark was familiar with the area as the former AMC Northtown in the Northtown Mall was still operating as a discount house. But the Cinemark 17 was actually supposed to be in Dallas and not Farmers Branch. This theater was targeted as an 18-screen, $30 million development at Inwood Road and Forest Lane just three miles to the east. But the city of Dallas blocked the theater so it ended up in Farmers Branch instead.
The Cinemark 17 became an 83,000-square-foot complex featuring 17-screens and costing $18 million. The theater debuted July 28, 1995 a bit over two months later than the AMC Grand. The 17’s two largest auditoria each seated 634 with high-backed, rocking-chair seats. The two largest Cinemark 17 theaters had stadium-seating with “radius curve” screens that were promoted as the 75 foot screens at 32-by-75-foot screens. Moviegoers were “treated” to Waterworld as the first regular feature on the 75’ screen.
Like the Grand, the Cinemark folks promised at least one art film at all times in the 130-seat smaller theater(s). And like the Grand, that really wasn’t always consistent. The snack bar area had expanded offerings including a pizzeria (Mama Rugis), cappuccino bar (“Java Wally's”) and would go on to have short-order cook items, salads, and ice cream. The massive arcade featured contemporary games that, as of 2015, still featured rotation of games to stay current.
The Cinemark 17 saw more impressive multiplexes come in including Cinemark’s own Legacy while other contemporaries including the AMC Grand 24 or the Macarthur Marketplace shuttered or were dropped by their circuits. Give Cinemark credit as it just kept updating the 17. In August of 1999, an IMAX 3-D theater was added showing T-Rex: Back to the Crustaceans. (Unlike later IMAX theaters added at local AMC theaters, this was an actual IMAX theater.) The theater also was renovated to included stadium seating in the smaller auditoria. The odd mix of sound systems was replaced by all digital multichannel audio and switched to digital projection including classic films and Fathom events sent via satellite. As the theater neared its 20th anniversary, it seemed every bit as vibrant as the day it opened.
Just from newspaper articles and ads, this theater started out as a concept by Trans-World Enterprises called “The Carrousel,” a family entertainment strip at the northwest corner of Collins Avenue and Pioneer Parkway. The Carrousel’s restaurants would take up 12,500 square feet and at the end of the strip was a 10,800 square foot quad-plex with 250 seats each. Groundbreaking ceremonies were held for the million dollar facility on February 13, 1973 to open prior to year’s end. The lobby was unusual and the concept was a pre-cursor to the better-integrated notion of movies plus meal with the money staying in house that was a trend in the early 21st Century. The projection was supposedly designed to be automated so that personnel could be efficiently cross-trained for the entire operation. The Family Carrousel Entertainment complex concept — which was supposed to spread nationwide and most immediately to a planned Carrousel in Coffeyville, Kansas — doesn’t appear to have gained much traction.
Based on the ads, the theater has bookings listed as the Pioneer Cinema in 1976 and it appears that the theater transfers to the fledgling Charles Boren Circuit and it’s renamed the Arlington Cinema IV. The theater was then operated independently of the adjoining strip center businesses. This operator briefly moves the theater to an odd pricing structure where one screen is designated as the dollar screen, one is designated as the $2 screen for long-running hit films, and two have opening-week features at $2.50. Tuesdays were designated as bargain nights. In mid-March of 1978, the theater goes totally to sub-run, dollar house operation.
In 1980, the Plitt circuit takes on the theater. It flops the name to Cinema Arlington IV and then simply Cinema Arlington. It does try to return to first-run during its operation. As a circuit, Plitt Southern would succumb to newcomers within DFW to circuits including Cinemark before going out of operation. Not surprisingly, the Cinema Arlington would become part of the Cinemark family where it receives its final name of Movies 4. Cinemark tags the theater as a sub-run dollar house facility. Apparently, Titanic was quite the hit for the theater in 1998. The moviehouse may have ended as an independent as its theatrical era ended. One might surmise that the theater fulfilled an initial 15-year lease followed by a 10-year lease before eventually becoming a non-profit house of worship. The facility was still a house of worship as of the mid-2010s with its original attraction board still apparent on the Collins St. signage.
Again, this is based on the ads and some articles as this theater wasn’t on my frequently visited list.
The General Cinema Corporation (GCC) Town East 6 was a theater opening in May of 1985 just yards from its GCC Town East 5 outside of Town East Mall. The theater’s development was occurring at the time when Mesquite became one of the fast-growing communities in the state. The theater would close in August 1998 when AMC changed film-going in Mesquite forever. In the Mesquite zone of DFW film exhibition, however, the top dog for more than three decades was General Cinema.
GCC’s first foray into Dallas was when it was still called General Drive-In opening Big Town Cinema in February of 1964 adjoining the five-year old Big Town Mall, Dallas’ first enclosed shopping center. Ten years later, it was operating just outside of Mesquite’s second mall, the Town East Mall opening June 28, 1974. GCC’s Big Town theater went to discount status. Traffic was packed around the Town East area and retail complexes popped up overnight. There was a need for more than just two first-run auditoria. United Artists (UA) was the first circuit to challenge GCC with its Town East 6 opening on June 4, 1982 in the nearby Driftwood Shopping Center.
Now battling for clearances, UA won big summer clearances getting “Star Trek II”, “E.T.” and “Blade Runner” for its opening month. The GCC Town East I & II would close briefly to re-open on December 17, 1982 transitioning from a two-screen to a five-screen operation. But at a pad across the highway from Town East was the Towne Crossing Center that would deliver the AMC Towne Crossing 8. GCC didn’t take kindly to a third circuit coming into its flagship zone.
In 1983, the Outlet Mall at Town East was announced by John Shotsman and in 1984, GCC would make its tactical moves to secure the zone. In 1984, Town East V was closed again and totally gutted becoming a prototype for many almost identical theaters which General Cinema would create or retrofit and re-re-opening December 7, 1984. And to mark its territory much like the game of Risk, just yards away it was constructing another six-screen theater launching May 24, 1985. That theater was an outparcel building to the Outlet Mall at Town East called the GCC Town East 6 with the exterior architected by Milton Powell & Associates which actually launched three months ahead of the AMC eight-screen Towne Crossing. It also shared its grand opening date with the North Hills 7 inside that mall in North Richland Hills.
Now with two Town East 6’s, one Town East 5 and the AMC 8 in Mesquite, confusion for consumers was palpable as the theaters were close in both name and proximity. But business was brisk with business from Rockwall, east Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Forney and even Terrell. Mesquite was a true cinema lovers destination. For the Town East 6, “Home Alone” (1990) would become a massive money maker and was interlocked on three of the six screens. A rarity for the six-plex. And GCC had weathered the competition in the short term with its concept of plopping down a multiplex and then another multiplex nearby if needed as it had at the Redbird Mall in South Dallas, or its Northpark I/II & III/IV in the Central Zone in Dallas. But that would all change.
As a harbinger of bad karma, the Outlet Mall of Town East tried a name change and went out of business within four years. After a planned 110-lane bowling alley didn’t occur in that space, the building was repurposed to a strip shopping center, Home Depot, etc. This didn’t destroy the GCC Town East 6 but the lack of foot traffic for years at that space plus the construction didn’t help either. Worse yet for the Town East 6 was that the Garland area would get two megaplexes to the North (Cinemark in 1992 and UA in 1996). Then AMC delivered the knockout blow with its 30-screen megaplex AMC Mesquite just two exits to the south in 1998. That would end the AMC Towne Crossing. Starplex Cinemas would add a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney. Megaplexes also came to Rockwall and Terrell got a multiplex. The Town East multiplexes were toast but how long would they last?
General Cinema closed the Town East Six as classes went back into session in 1998 ending the theater’s life though outliving the life of its neighboring outlet mall by more than ten years. The theater would eventually be gutted and transformed into a retail space where it and the former Towne Crossing 8 both hosted waterbed stores at some point in their lives. And almost as suddenly the Town East Five left prior to Christmas of 1998. The Big Town Cinema out-survived both of GCC’s Town East properties closing as a Cinemark discount cinema in January of 1999. For General Cinema, it was the beginning of the end as the circuit would collapse under the weight of a faded multiplex business concept in a megaplex world.
Star Cinemas would re-re-re-open the original GCC Town East in December of 2001 closing in June of 2002 to hop across to the former AMC Towne Crossing operating quietly as the Lone Star Cinema briefly. The Town East V would be quietly excised from the shopping center while the other three multiplexes lived on as retail stores. But the GCC Town East 6 represented the circuit’s last stand and how Town East and Mesquite became DFW’s third most attended zone in the DFW area in the 1980s.
FunAsiA Richardson is a theater/restaurant/dance hall/event center catering to the Southeast Asian population in the northeastern portion of the Dallas suburb. The operators transformed a moribund six-screen theater which had been open just nine years (1989-1998) into a vibrant cultural destination that proved to be a success beginning in late 2002 and running into the mid-2010s as of this writing. The three-screen theater played contemporary Hindi, Telegu, Tamil, and some English language films while the FunAsiA hosted events ranging from live concerts, beauty pageants, cricket viewing, weddings, and parties.
Backing up to August of 1988, General Cinema Corp. (GCC) signed a lease for a 25,442-square-foot six-screen movie theater across the street from the Richardson Square Mall where it had been operating an aging three-screen theater since October of 1977 . The new six-plex would be loosely patterned after a Town East GCC Theater and fairly similar to the Collin Creek Mall theater to the northwest in Plano. The theater launched on October 6, 1989 with “Turner & Hooch”, “An Innocent Man,” “Night Game,” “In Country,” “Batman,” and “Dead Poet’s Society.”
The Richardson 6 did have at least one thing going for it: as one newspaper critic said, the theaters were an improvement over the Richardson Square Mall Cinema triplex but “almost anything would be.” And the theater was the “A” house while the Richardson Square Mall III became the subrun discount house trying to get to the end of its 20-year lease. The mall cinema came close closing in April of 1995. With all of the movie traffic across the street and more buildings sandwiched in, parking became tight for the Richardson. GCC was able to have overflow parking at neighboring Mervyn’s Department Store with signage directing folks there.
The Richardson was chugging along even after a rash of GCC closings in 1998. But Black Thursday hit on October 5, 2000 – just one day shy of the theater’s ninth anniversary. GCC closed all three remaining Tarrant Country locations with the Arlington Square 8, Central Park 8, and Ridgmar and kept three of four Dallas County locations operating. Unfortunately, drawing the short straw was the GCC Richardson 6. With no new product or advertising, the closing was not unexpected and all shows after 5:00p cancelled that final evening for a quick-as-possible closing. Features were removed from the attraction board even before the showtimes of the final showings of “Almost Famous,” Chicken Run,” and four other films were scheduled to play.
The remaining DFW GCC theaters getting an endorsement and staying open were the GCC Galleria, Furneaux Creek and Irving Mall. Two weeks later, only the Irving Mall remained open as GCC was on life support in DFW. But good news was ahead for the GCC Richardson. With a growing Southern Asian population in the area, FunAsiA took on the theater and with a $1.6 million overhaul, turned the three theaters on the building’s west side to show new releases from Bollywood and had video capabilities for special events and weddings. The other three theaters were turned into an Indian dance club called Ghungroo and restaurant as well as space/banquet hall for weddings and special events opening in December of 2002. So popular was FunAsiA that it opened a second location in Irving and another in Houston. The Irving operation would be consolidated to film offerings moving to a couple of screens at the Macarthur Marketplace but the original Richardson FunAsiA was still going strong into the mid-2010s with expansive food offerings.
The Caruth Plaza Cinema was an underperforming twin-screen theater which opened as the Plitt Cinema in 1979 across the street from the General Cinema Company’s (GCC) Northpark III & IV. It was acquired by GCC in 1984 from Plitt and converted to a triplex and ultimately closed early in 1992 under pressure from superior theaters just yards away.
For decades, Dallas film exhibition was controlled by the Interstate Circuit. In the single-screen era, Interstate had the best movie palaces and it generally picked suburban locations well. But a new breed of twin-screens and then multiplexes doomed the Interstate business model and Plitt Theatres Inc. purchased the last of the ABC-Interstate theaters in March of 1978. Its first decision was to not renew the lease for the Wilshire Theater it had just acquired leaving it with only the single-screen Medallion within Dallas’ most lucrative theater area known as the “Central Zone.” But Plitt would rectify that moving into the newly-created and nearly 200,000 square foot Caruth Fashion Center. Plitt was moving into hostile territory, however, with General Cinema’s wildly-successful Northpark I & II just a quarter of a mile away within eyeball range and the Northpark III & IV directly across the street. These two theaters were said to be the most lucrative in the entire state of Texas.
Billed by Plitt as the “finest theatre complex in the Southwest,” the Plitt Cinema could have been a game-changer. But Plitt claimed just 15,558 square feet of the 197,050 square foot Caruth Plaza and carved out a benign twin-screen theater. Had Plitt been bolder and created a multiplex at that time, their entire fortunes might have been different. But the twin was created with Plitt Cinema’s Auditorium One having 700 seats and 70mm capability. Auditorium Two had around 500 seats. And upon opening, their “finest theatre” claim was quite unjustified. The Plitt could boast of being the best cinema on its side of the street – being the only one on its side of the street — but even that would change within ten years. The twin-screener was an underachiever for Plitt. But it was the only theater at Park Lane and U.S. 75 to have an attraction sign (Alfred Nasher wouldn’t allow gaudy signage at either his Northpark East or West turf) so it was arguable that this was the most visible and the easiest to find of the three theaters.
Grand opening for the Plitt Cinema was on December 14, 1979 with “The Jerk” and “1941.” The Spielberg “1941” film was a coup for Plitt as the theater served as a means to get clearances away from the GCC competition across the street. But “1941” wasn’t quite the stellar success and was a portent of things to come for Plitt. The theater did have its moments. It had the sneak peak of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1981 and then had the southwest exclusive 70mm run of that film showing in Dolby stereo before anyone else with that format. And it had a 70mm success with the repertory “Sound of Music” screening. But having the theater in existence partly to block clearances from the competition just didn’t work out for anyone and within five years of its opening, Plitt sold the location to its rival GCC in May of 1984.
The Plitt was briefly renamed as the Caruth Twin operating for several months. GCC would close off theater two for remodeling as kids went back to school in 1984. On October 26th of 1984, GCC re-opened the now-twinned and smaller 500-seat auditorium. Converted into two, 225-seat auditoriums in the triplex, GCC had made movie-going at the Caruth Plaza even worse. During the remodel, the theater was renamed the General Cinema Caruth Plaza Cinema, its final name. And the original theater remained with minor changes later leading to 650 seats but still with 70mm projection.
It appeared that GCC had weathered the clearance battle well as it monopolized all the theaters situated near three of Park Lane & U.S. 75’s heavily trafficked four corners. But AMC and United Artists weren’t enamored of GCC having all of the money in the lucrative Northpark area. Caruth had developed the Glen Lakes area just one hotel removed from his Caruth Fashion Plaza about a quarter of a mile away. AMC would secure a spot for its eight-plex AMC Northpark (changed later to the AMC Glen Lakes) theater opening there in 1988. If that wasn’t bad enough for the GCC Caruth Plaza, the final nail in the coffin came when construction equipment was making noise you could hear inside of the GCC Caruth Plaza. That equipment was creating UA’s super-destination theater ultimately called the UA Plaza which was directly behind and shadowing over the cowering GCC Caruth Plaza. The UA Plaza opened in May 1989. It’s unclear why the GCC Caruth Plaza remained in operation with this far superior multiplex a bowling ball’s throw away other than stubbornness by GCC trying to get to the end of its lease.
The Caruth Plaza Cinema would finally get its mercy killing limping to a very quiet ending on January 12, 1992. It was unable to make it to the end of its lease period. The 70mm projector from Auditorium One and some other equipment would make the short trip across the street providing house four of the GCC Northpark III & IV with 70mm projection. That may have been the lasting value of the largely-forgotten Caruth Plaza Cinema.
General Cinema’s (GCC) Northpark East III & IV was the cousin to Northpark I&II coming online in 1974, nine years after the original twin, and just a bit over a quarter of a mile away. The theater was a success running just shy of 25 years. The original Northpark “West” I & II had changed movie-going forever begnining in 1965 in Dallas as the Downtown zone began a rapid descent and moviegoers went north to Dallas’ “Central Zone” of movie exhibition. But Northpark had company with other road show theaters including the UA 150 (1968) and Interstate’s Medallion Theater (1969) joining the veteran Interstate Wilshire Theater.
To reduce the strain on bookings, GCC decided to open a second twin Northpark theater. But with space tight on the west side of US 75 adjoining the wildly popular Northpark Mall, GCC headed east to a newly created spot in Northpark East created by the same folks who owned the mall, Alfred Nasher. The white brick theater was called the Northpark East III & IV and at the outset had premiere films and by the end of its lifecycle often was the downgraded location for films moving from the I&II though also having repertory 70mm film screenings.
The Northpark III & IV opened Nov. 1, 1974 with the films “Gold” and “Law and Disorder.” The theater was obscured somewhat by an adjacent outparcel building hurting view from busy U.S. 75. Meanwhile, Nasher’s architectural sensibilities would not allow for gaudy attraction signs so common to other GCC properties. Granted, the theater was classy and certainly not pretentious. Its style was harmonic with the Omniplan Northpark architectural jobs on both sides of the street. But, frankly, the new theater was a bit challenging to see. This would get even worse in 1977 when Nasher decided to build some high-rise buildings adjoining the two existing buildings. These buildings would completely obscure the theater from Park Lane which was the east-west road passing by the theater. For unsuspecting patrons showing up at the incorrect Northpark I & II, the directions to the III & IV could be frustrating and time-consuming depending on where your car was parked at the mall.
GCC stated that the two Northpark cinemas were the highest grossing theaters in the state of Texas for many years. And in 1984 it would purchase the Plitt Cinema within Caruth Plaza to have three theaters in close proximity. But the Northpark III & IV and Caruth Plaza Cinema got tremendous competition when the eight-screen AMC Northpark / Glen Lakes began operation half a mile away in 1988 and United Artists debuting its destination showplace, the UA Plaza right across the street from the III & IV and just behind the Caruth cinema early in 1989. All of the theaters brought their A-game moving people briskly and with great care through the ticket lines and lengthy concession lines. GCC’s response was to update both the III & IV and I & II in projects completed in 1989.
In 1992, GCC closed the Caruth Haven complex and its 70mm capability was added to the Northparks’s Cinema IV four meaning that 70mm could potentially be playing at all four GCC Northpark auditoria. Also in 1992, the III & IV was the first theater to try a reserved seating experiment with Ticketmaster. The theater roped off seats which would be held in reserve for Ticketmaster advance purchases. Same day Ticketmaster purchases added $1 to the cost of the seat which advanced day tickets were $1.35 from any Ticketmaster outlet or $1.85 for Ticketmaster by phone orders. This plan was a bit ahead of its time and a similar concept devised for Internet movie ticket purchase proved more successful.
Thanks in part to the GCC Northparks, the Central Zone was easily the most popular exhibition zone. But bad news was ahead for the aging twins in the 1990s and the ‘plexes at the turn of the century. All of the Central Zone theaters would fall into hard times as moviegoers flocked to a new breed of 24- and 30-screen megaplexes in the DFW area. The AMC Grand (1995) took its toll and up and down U.S. 75 theaters came online including Sony’s Cityplace (1995) to the South and Sony’s Keystone (1997) to the North. A small ray of light occurred for the III & IV on January 10, 1997. The DART Red Line train would be extended to Park Lane with the train’s temporary stop being the parking lot right behind the Northpark III & IV which the theater promoted. But that wouldn’t provide the needed uptick for the theater or its competitors in the Zone.
Weekday attendance was woeful for this location. Not surprisingly, the first shoe to drop within the Central Zone was the GCC III & IV shuttering June 28, 1998. For employees hopping across the street to the Northpark I & II, it would close next just four months later in a rash of GCC closures around the city including Carrollton, Collin Creek Mall, North Hills, Town East 6, and White Settlement. The UA Cine (2000), Medallion (2001), Plaza (2005) and the Glen Lakes (2006) would also go down for the count. An AMC theater inside of the Northpark mall would open (2006) carrying the Northpark cinema nameplate forward while the III & IV building would be transformed into Art Institute of Dallas space including a culinary school which was going strong into the mid-2010s.
For United Artists Circuit, 1984 was the year of the 8-plex. In the DFW area opening that year were the almost identical UA Las Vegas Trail 8, UA South 8, UA North Star 8 and this theater, the UA Bowen 8 in South Arlington. South Arlington and southern Grand Prairie to the east and southern Fort Worth to the west would become a major cinema-going corridor and the newly created Interstate 20 would soon create a retail nexus in South Arlington. The UA Bowen opened in 1984 with 2,160 seats and would be joined in December by the AMC Green Oaks, another eight-screen operation opening just about a mile away in 1984 as the circuits competed for clearances throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
General Cinema would open an eight-screener in 1986 and the Parks mall would come online within two years about two miles to the east. Up and down I-20, theaters sprouted at exits such as the Sony 20 & 287 multiplex to the west, the Cinemark Grand Prairie megaplex to the east, the Sony CityView at Bryant Irvin, et al. The Bowen did have an advantage in that a night at the theater could include dinner and/or drinks at the neighboring, popular sports-themed Bobby V’s Sports Gallery Café operated at that time by the Texas Rangers' baseball team manager. And UA put some money into the Bowen as the competition increased. Enhancements included digital sound, increased concessions, and new paint and carpeting. But by the mid-1990s, the Bowen was under competition from a new breed of megaplexes. UA, itself, would build stadium-seating destination theaters in Arlington with its Eastchase Parkway to the north and its Grand Prairie complex to the east.
The Bowen just didn’t have the architectural flair that UA was putting into its new theaters. Explained John Panzeca, vice president of United Artists Realty in charge of the company’s UA Plaza in Dallas project said of theaters such as Bowen 8, South and Vegas Trail, “For years we built theaters that were little, rectangular boxes…. I used to point with pride to how inexpensively I could get those projects to come in.” That said, UA unveiled a plan to resurrect the quickly aging Bowen 8. United Artists announced late in 1998 that it would expand the Bowen to a 14-screen, stadium-seating theater to open in spring of 1999. But AMC decided to outmaneuver UA by announcing a megaplex to open within the Parks at Arlington mall. UA was running into financial issues toward the end of the century and expansion plans such as those announced at the Bowen were cooling.
The Bowen 14 stadium seating expansion didn’t take place but the theater had a nice uptick in business because AMC would close the arch-rival Green Oaks in 1999 deciding against a lease renewal as it prepped the new mall megaplex. Fortunately for the UA Bowen, the AMC Parks wouldn’t open for another three years. Meanwhile, General Cinema would shutter all of its Tarrant County locations on October 5, 2000 including the nearby Arlington Park Square 8. There was no more turf fighting for film clearances for the Bowen until the Movie Tavern reopened the AMC property in summer of 2002. But foot traffic was seriously hurt when the AMC Parks finally launched on November 6, 2002.
With the Bowen’s 20-year lease coming due and 80’s era multiplexes shuttering all over DFW, employees had to sense doom. Neither the UA South 8 nor the UA Town East made it to the end of their 20-year leases. The UA Las Vegas Trail 8 was downgraded to dollar-house sub-run status and was going to close on its 20-year lease. Regal had taken on the struggling UA circuit and had no love for or money to invest in fading properties. The announcement for the UA came as the theater closed up shop on quickly after evening shows on December 14, 2003 fulfilling its lease. And within a year, hopes for a cinematic treasure rebirth at that location were shot down as Binks Construction invested $1.5 million in the property to convert the theater into a two-story self-storage building with elevator that was still operating in the mid-2010s. However, the UA Bowen was a profitable 8-screen multiplex bringing many fine films to the area and proved to be a survivor fulfilling its 20-year lease. And the popular neighboring night spot Bobby V’s was continuing to draw patrons into the mid-2010s.
In June of 1960, Sears not only decided to build its first retail store within Fort Worth, it created an entire subsidiary called Homart Development to construct shopping centers, the first of which was Seminary South Shopping Center on an 88-acre tract opening in 1962. In 1969, General Cinemas decided the time was right to construct two theaters simultaneously adjoining shopping centers. They were the Seminary South Center I & II in the Homart plaza and the Six Flags Cinema I & II in nearby Arlington, TX, a project that had delays opening in August of 1970. General Cinemas also opened in Homart’s other properties in DFW: inside of Valley View Mall in Dallas, outside of what would eventually be called the Parks Mall in Arlington, outside of the Town East Mall in Mesquite.
The GCC Seminary officially opened on Christmas Day 1969 and would expand in the 1970s to three screens as auditorium two was twinned. The location had an art gallery and a smokers area like many of the other theaters of that era. The Seminary South struggled due to competition from new enclosed malls in Fort Worth, Arlington, and North Richland Hills. Locals disparagingly referred to the area as “Cemetery South” as the center shed stores and hurt General Cinema’s revenues. But there was hope for General Cinema.
In 1985, Homart finally sold the underachieving shopping center to the Texas Centers Association which spent $25 million to purchase the property and another $25 million to convert the open air shopping center to an enclosed mall designed by Altoon and Porter, architects from California. The architects had a spot for GCC on the second floor right by one of the mall’s main entry points on the East side just up the escalator. The mall project finally opened on September 4th, 1987 as the Town Center Fort Worth with great optimism. Not long thereafter, General Cinema completed work on its new GCC Town Center 8 which opened and the chain closed its exterior Seminary South I, II, III. An attraction sign was visible from both the adjoining Interstate highway and access road heading southbound.
But ominously, Black Monday occurred October 19, 1987 and the economy regressed tremendously hurting low-to-middle class malls such as the Town Center. Within five years, the mall lost its first anchor in J.C. Penney’s which reported absurdly low revenue receipt totals. Many stores between also closed and even the mall’s original anchor grocery store went out of business. Town Center would regress to “greyfield” status, an industry term akin to a “dead mall” within just ten years of its opening. For General Cinema, which was about to get slaughtered by a new breed of megaplexes, there was no reason to continue operating the underachieving Town Center 8. On January 19, 1992, GCC pulled the plug prior to completing its fifth year.
Three other chains tried to rebrand the theater as a discount house which seemed reasonable given the mall’s remaining clientele. First up in 1992 was Trans-Texas calling the theater the Town Center Dollar Cinema 8 and running it as a sub-run operation. After they failed, next up were the Hollywood circuit and the Wallace circuit. Wallace even offered free seats to any TCU student from the nearby University to get anyone to show up for a period of time. But even the attraction of free seats in a ghost town mall, a theater in disrepair, presentations consisting of scratchy 35mm prints, and a wide variety of insects running freely up and down the aisles was not a good draw as the theater was mercifully shuttered in March of 2003. Only a miracle could save the cinema if not the entire complex from the wrecking ball.
José de Jesus Legaspi was the miracle worker transforming the moribund “Cemetery South” / “Town Sucker Mall” to La Gran Plaza, a vibrant Hispanic mall built with an intriguing tax rebate incentive deal allowing the project to flourish. The Mexican villa concept and business plan was visionary. And an important component from the outset was reviving the Town Center 8. Rebranded by Cinema Latino circuit with a May 1, 2003 grand opening as Cinema Latino de Fort Worth, the theater finally found its audience almost twenty years after its original opening when the mall relaunched as La Gran Plaza in 2005.
Cinema Latino de Fort Worth played first-run, mostly American films with Spanish subtitles; dubbed American films into Spanish (primarily animated and effects-centered action films); and some Mexican films that played exclusively at the theater. Cinema Latino also played all of the Pantelion releases from the studio created by Lionsgate and Grupo Televisa to reach American Hispanic audiences. The theater had big successes with Pantelion titles including “…instructions not included,” “From Prada to Nada” and “Pulling Strings.” By the 2010s, the circuit still was operating theaters in the Phoenix area, the Houston area, and the Denver area as well as its Fort Worth location. Given the state of the Town Center, few could have predicted that this multiplex could possibly have survived past its 25th anniversary, especially in a megaplex world. But as Bruce Willis said in the dubbed Die Hard, “¿Quién diría?” Who knew?
But, sadly, the Cinema Latino couldn’t come up with a lease renewal and the theater closed in December 22, 2014. The mall hoped to find a sixth operator for the multiplex as of 2015.
The UA Hulen Cinema 6 opened as an outparcel building just to southwest of Hulen Mall which, itself, had opened theatreless in 1977. Over the past four decades, the Hulen has bucked the trend of six-screen multiplexes built by the UA chain in 1982 as well as the eight screeners built in 1984. Virtually all of the 1980s' era UAs in the DFW area largely fulfilled 20-year lease cycles and were vacated with few remaining as theaters. The Town East 6 in Mesquite became a grocery store. The Walnut Hill 6 became a bar. And the South and Las Vegas Trail became churches. But the UA Hulen Cinema 6 was a survivor and then some.
The UA circuit showed confidence in its Hulen location even when challenged in 1985 by AMC which built its AMC Hulen 10 10-screen theater just about a mile to the south of the UA Hulen 6. To keep up with AMC — if not confuse potential moviegoers — UA would transform its Hulen operation to ten screens and the two co-existed into the 21st Century. Box office personnel would constantly have to help customers with a courteous, “You want the other Hulen 10 theater a mile away.”
Thirty years later, both locations are managing to continue in operation. The AMC Hulen 10 would eventually become the Starplex 10 after AMC left completing its 20-year lease. Starplex would opt for stadium seating with the theater continuing into the mid-2010s. Regal which had taken over UA theaters would vacate the Hulen just shy of 25 years. A great run and an opportunity for another circuit to swoop in.
In the first quarter of 2007, Movie Tavern followed up the success of its full-service Bedford location by giving the former UA Hulen a $2.5 million makeover with stadium-style seating with high-back leather rocker chairs, DTS digital sound, lobby with bar, plasma displays, outdoor patio, and full dinner menu to the auditoriums opening Sept. 7, 2007. The flagship location proved popular for the circuit and the theater would get yet another shocking make-over to keep the theater relevant with more modern megaplexes.
In 2012, the theater was completely remodeled including three brand new screens with the facility’s total now at 1,265 seats. Included was a larger lobby and an expanded bar area as well as improved presentation including MT-X digital projection with Real D 3D and surround sound capabilities in all auditoriums. To say that the former UA Hulen Cinema 6 is a survivor would be an understatement as Movie Tavern was trying to keep the theater strong heading into the 2020s.
The Las Vegas Trail retail area was conceived of in 1973 and opened theatreless in 1974 at Las Vegas Trail and where Interstate 30 is presently. However, in 1980, General Cinema Circuit (GCC) opened its GCC White Settlement about a mile away for people in west Fort Worth and White Settlement. United Artists decided to challenge in that zone in 1984 much as it had challenged GCC’s Redbird Mall theaters in Dallas. In fact, both the UA South 8 and Las Vegas Trail 8 were almost identical from the outside and not dissimilar from the North Star 8 in Garland and UA Bedford going up about the same time.
From an architectural point of view, the UA Las Vegas Trail, these UA cinemas were not destination theaters like Dallas' UA 150 well before it or Fort Worth’s Fossil Creek well after it but neighborhood theaters serving a specific radius. John Panzeca, vice president of United Artists Realty in charge of the company’s UA Plaza in Dallas project said of theaters such as Las Vegas Trail, Bowen, South and UA’s Northstar, “For years we built theaters that were little, rectangular boxes….I used to point with pride to how inexpensively I could get those projects to come in.”
But this theater made the circuit money and competed for clearances for top films favorably against the inferior GCC White Settlement out its outset in 1984 and for its first two years of operation. It had one 70mm screen that was THX certified and helped the circuit and theater land its biggest prize in 1984 with “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.“ GCC decided to build a second theater serving west Fort Worth to blunt the competition and have improved presentation to better compete with the superior facility roughly two miles away. It opened its Ridgmar V theater patterned closely after its remodeled Town East V cinema outside of the Mesquite Shopping Mall. The Ridgmar V, Las Vegas Trail 8, and White Settlement co-existed well together.
The threat of an AMC megaplex to be built inside of Ridgmar would have employees updating their resumes for the potential fall-out. Announced in 1999, the theater was to open in 2001. But it never occurred and the Ridgmar Mall’s grand re-opening took place without an interior theater. And the competition was down a multiplex as General Cinema had shuttered the White Settlement in 1998. And on October 5, 2000, there was no more competition for the UA as General Cinema closed the Ridgmar V. This was great news all the way to December of 2003 when Ridgmar redesigned once again and, this time, got its interior theater in the form of a Rave Motion Pictures 13-screen theater. The writing was on the wall for the Las Vegas Trail 8 which became a sub-run discount dollar house and the UA decided to simply honor its full 20-year lease without a renewal and the theater was closed. Like the UA South, the theater would be converted to a non-profit house of worship.
Cinema architect Frank Dagdagan created three Japan theaters and one Hong Kong location for AMC Entertainment International including this entry for the circuit’s second theater in Japan, the AMC Nakama 16. The 16-screen, 57,000 square foot theatre was designed with 2,600-seats and at the time of opening was the largest theatre in Japan. Located at the Daiei-Nakama shopping center groundbreaking was late in 1997 with an opening in November 1998.
The auditorium design gave moviegoers an unobstructed view of the screen and had the AMC LoveSeats with retractable cupholder armrests. All auditoriums will feature Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) and the High Impact Theatre System (HITS) with compound-curved screens. The AMC Canal City 13 theatre in Fukuoka, Japan, was the first AMC theater in Japan theater launching in April 1996.
In 1998 and 1999, announcements that two new-build art theaters were coming to town in the Landmark West Village and the Angelika – Dallas at Mockingbird Station. Dallas had never had a new-build art cinema – though many converted spaces such as the UA Ciné and Silver Cinema’s Inwood Theater both of which were operating at the time of these announcements. And the Anglelika was in good hands with veteran art cinema architect Frank Dagdagan who had done the circuit’s first Texas theater in Houston.
So this was exiciting despite the fact that the projects fell months and months behind schedule. At Mockingbird Station, the $100 million, 10-acre business plus living concept was delayed by bad weather. At the Landmark West Village, Landmark’s bankruptcy forced the project to stall out and was endangered. The Angelika finally had a soft launch on July 27, 2001 with Deep Ellum Film, Music, Arts and Noise Inc. (DEFMAN) presenting free screenings of independent films, “George Washington” and “L.I.E.” The theater then had more free soft launch screenings until it grand opening on August 3, 2001. The theater’s film experience was an instant success and spelled doom for the nearby UA Ciné as well as the Granada Theater.
In addition to art cinema, the theater hosted many major film festivals including USA Film Festival, USA Kidfest, Jewish Film festival screenings, Dallas International Film Festival, Dallas Black Film Festival, and Vistas Hispanic film festival among them.
Downstairs, however, the downstairs cafe by Lisa Kelley featuring risotto cakes , pounded pork medallions and sautéed chicken breast didn’t click with the audience and would soon be downgraded to coffee bar and prepared sandwiches and desserts. Kelley left in less than four months and another chef tried without much success to make the theater a restauarant. And more competition for the art cinema dollar came when new buyers took on the flatlined Landmark West Village opening as the Magnolia Theater in January of 2002. And Angelika would open a West Plano theatre within the DFW market. As of the mid-2010s, all three theaters were operating as full-time art cinemas.
Announced in 2002 as part of the 23-acre Legacy Town Center in West Plano, Angelika’s second Dallas area art theater was set to open in 2003. This was architect Frank Dagdagan’s fourth theater for Angelika. He said that the theater has a bohemian aesthetic with unique art and showcasing raw materials including concrete, steel, two-story wall of glass, wood, marble and bamboo. Like other Angelika’s a large crystal chandelier was featured with this one accented with blue neon. The focal point upon entering is the grand staircase leading both to concession/café/ lounge area and the auditoriums. Black-box style auditoriums featured Dolby Digital sound, stadium seating, retractable armrests with cup holders at each seat, and “wall-to-wall” screens. The two largest houses had all-leather seating.
The delayed theater had a soft launch with the Dallas South Asian Film Festival’s repertory screening of “East is East” on June 21, 2004 and then having its official grand opening on June 23, 2004 with “Fahrenheit 9/11” playing on three of the five screens. The theater was seen as progress for moviegoers not only being Collin County’s first art house but in 1990, the Mayor of Plano kept the film, “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” from being shown in the city saying “I can… understand if you show it in Dallas, Texas. But Plano is a community of suburban families.”
With the AMC Stonebriar just to the North along with the and the wildly successful Cinemark West Plano just to the South, the cinematic dollars were heading North as West Plano / Frisco became DFW’s hottest place to watch new films: mainstream and art, included.
Phil Isley Enterprises opened the Granada Theater, its first in the Dallas market and eighth overall on January 16, 1946 with “Mildred Pierce”. Post-War Dallas saw the rise of new suburban movie theaters which would pressure some of the second-run theaters on downtown Dallas' theater row. The Raymond F. Smith architected theater had 950 seats and a tower with changing neon lights. Isley would soon take on the Rita Theater in East Dallas for its second theater. The Granada was community-minded with benefit screenings, church services, early children’s matinees with yo-yo contests, and some local-interest film choices. It had a thin sliver of the population with the Arcadia to the south, the Gay turned Coronet to the west and joined in October of 1946 by the nearby Wilshire Theater. But Isley was up to the task running a consistent and neighborhood-centered operation.
Almost twenty years into Isley’s operation, he sold the Granada and 12 other theaters in his portfolio to John H. Rowley for $1.5 million. Rowley had just sold out of his Rowley United as that circuit would operate as the southwest region of United Artists (UA). The Granada would be the first group in Rowley’s newly-christened and short-lived Big Tex Theaters before being subsumed by United Artists. Under UA opeation, the Granada lost its way as a number of theaters on the periphery of the Central Zone in Dallas struggled.
Within the C-Zone, newer theaters like the UA Ciné, Medallion, and Northpark I & II got the new films. Veteran Highland Park’s Village got the family films and the Wilshire did great with road shows and first-run bookings. The Arcadia, Coronet, Knox St., Lakewood and Granada flailed to stay relevant just outside of the C-Zone. Pitched as an occasional under-carrier completing UA Ciné roadshow runs including “Far From the Madding Crowd” and “Funny Girl,” UA positioned the Granada as an arthouse and having a big hit with “The Producers.” The start was so good that UA switched names of the veteran Avenue Theater in East Dallas to the Guild Theater to rebrand there as art also.
The Guild failed with art and a company called Guild Art Theater would sublease and reposition the Guild as a porn theater which was very successful. The Granada, too, was failing as the Northpark III & IV came online adding new options for moviegoers. The Guild subleased the Granada from UA taking down posters for the MGM classical musicals in February of 1975 and abruptly switching it to an X with XXX second-show, “hardcore” porn. (The Fine Arts in Snider Plaza had the porno chic single-X audience so the Granada went for a different audience.)
Local shop owners weren’t too thrilled and the police raided theater during its very first week. A petition signed by 1,400 people tried to end the porn and picketers protested. The city put enough pressure on the theater – as well as the nearby adult operator, the Coronet Theater— including raids and daily fines to force a change. Guild Art would sub-sublease the theater to William Smart and a partner in late August 1975 who changed the theater back to a discount house. The first-time operators signed on with New American Cinema – which vacated the Festival Theater – and Zoo-FM, a local rock station which showed music-centric midnight shows during that period. The protests and raids had stopped but so had a viable flow of patrons. The Granada brand was tarnished and the sub-run $1 concept failed within five months. In March of 1976, the Guild came back playing adult films. The Guild left the building under scrutiny and UA subleased the theater to an operator who changed the theater to sub-run discount in November of 1976. Those operators reportedly walked away from the theater January 13, 1977 failing to make rent and UA locked up the property and the lease finally expired. UA left the property.
The next operators spent $50,0000 in the spring and summer of 1977 to convert the Granada to a live event space reducing to 600 seats. The theater opened with Kenny Rogers and soon featuring Muddy Waters with some other impressive acts booked. The venue failed quickly and some promised events at the end didn’t make it to the stage. The changes — including expanded stage — would serve the building well down the line but it was hard to convince lower Greenville residents saddened as the theater was vacant for the second time that year and a sixth-month period into 1978. It had a very uncertain future as theaters including the Esquire and the nearby Wilshire were among the single screen post-War suburban theaters in Dallas being demolished.
But operator Movie Inc. out of New Mexico took on the other neighborhood, former-art-turned-porn-theater in the Coronet creating an oft sold out repertory and cult film establishment. Having just 309 seats, Movie Inc. needed a bigger place so the Edison moved to the Granada Theater on April 20, 1978. The Granada held twice as many people and was more of a nightspot for the target audience. The Edison ran for about a year but with home video coming into vogue, that market was challenging and the Edison ended. A new operator came in who tried eclectic fare and another operator tried an Edison-like movie club concept with 20 repertory films for $25. That didn’t work. In February of 1984, Bill Neal ran the theater running repertory. His last screening was on Oct. 31, 1986 with “The Tingler.” The neighborhood turned out in force with “Save the Granada” signs and a petition with 2,000 signatures opposing the theater’s closing. Times had changed in ten years when picketers tried to close the then-adult house.
The next operator was Keith McKeague and John Appleton of Great Concepts who residents told to not create “another” restaurant, nightclub or bar in the Granada. They launched the Granada Cinema ‘n’ Drafthouse with beer as an option while watching second-run movies. Replacing the old rows of seats with dining tables though decreasing the house to 400 seats proved to be a winner. In 1992, Brian Schultz took on the Granada forming Granada Entertainment. In 1997, the Granada reported $2 million in revenue. They parlayed that into the purchase and redesign of a second location, the former UA Prestonwood Creek on Belt Line Road which would have a full kitchen and play first-run films. In 1999, the original Granada changed to first-run films. With competition due from the new Angelika, the Granada closed at the end of March 2001. Schultz’s fledgling Granada Entertainment circuit would soon become the dynamic, multi-state Studio Movie Grill circuit that blossomed in the early 21st Century.
In early 2002, new operators refurbished the Granada taking it back to live concerts including Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Steve Winwood, and Peter Tork of the Monkees. And the theater had football viewing, Oscars parties and even brought cinema classics back showing on the rooftop. As the theater was approaching its 70th anniversary, it was just as vibrant an entertainment spot deftly intertwined with its neighborhood as when it had opened. The Granada proved to be quite the survivor in Dallas’ entertainment history.
In April of 1988, PBA Development Inc., an affiliate of Cinemark Theatres, purchased 8.6 acres from Trammell Crow at the entrance to the 1,000-acre Westchester development at Carrier Parkway and I-20 in Grand Prairie for a 12-screen theater complex. A new theater, it was surmized, would attract people from Arlington, Grand Prairie, DeSoto and possibly South Dallas. On March 9, 1990, the multiplex opened following the previous fall’s opening of the circuit’s Vista Ridge 14 in Lewisville. The theater was a big success and would eventually attract competition.
United Artists decided to challenge Cinemark in three zones: Lewisville, Garland and Grand Prairie. Patterning its Grand Prairie theater after its UA Lakepointe 10 in Lewisville opened in December of 1994, the circuit opened its UA Grand Prairie 10 on August 24, 1995 at 510 Westchester Parkway seating 2,550. Two theaters had 490 seats featuring THX sound systems with all houses having DTS digital stereo. Opening features included Lord of Illusions, The Show, The Amazing Panda Adventure, and Desperado. UA would leave Lewisville while Cinemark downgraded its Garland location to sub-run discount status. That left Cinemark and UA Grand Prairie continuing to compete for clearances for more than 20 years. In the age of the megaplex, these two were among the longest-running same-zone challenge business situations in the DFW area.
AMC would open its new-build AMC at the Parks in Arlington just to the West but these two theaters just kept trucking past their 25th and 20th anniversaries looking virtually unchanged since their openings.
In October of 1995, a Dallas development company announced the 100,000 square foot 5,200 seat 20-screen Cinemark theater project on a 23-acre site just north of the northeast corner of Parker Road and Dallas North Tollway. The larger project extending to the corner would be completed by that development company twenty years later but the Cinemark project, itself, would come on in just over a year once residents’ concerns were addressed by the city council.
The circuit called its Tinseltown USA Plano theater it flagship location as the company would move its headquarters to a neighboring office building. Launching December 20, 1996, the all stadium-seating auditoria ranged in size from 200 to 600 seats each with multichannel sound. An additional Iwerks motion-simulator ride screen had 16 seats opening with “The Red Rock Run” though would be excised once the novelty wore thin. An arcade area —– featured at virtually all Cinemark theaters – fell into controversy when a city rule prohibiting arcades within the tollway corridor was enacted. The arcade would ultimately be replaced by a lounge when the theater was redesigned.
TInseltwon Plano would immediately become the DFW area’s second highest grossing theater behind only the AMC Grand and both AMC and Cinemark would take the momentum to expand in the megaplex era knocking out multiplex-centric General Cinema and counterpunch UA and Loews/Sony in the DFW market. In 1998, Tinseltown USA Plano surpassed the Grand as the highest grossing theater in DFW. And a second Cinemark Plano megaplex, the Legacy, on US-75 delivered stellar results upon its opening in June of 1999.
The Tinseltown USA became an incubator of concepts as the executives could walk over and see the results of concepts. Sneak previews sometimes with stars in attendance took place at the theater. Its moniker would be changed to the Cinemark West Plano and XD and received an incredible makeover with huge self-service concession area, Starbuck’s coffee, a Cinemark Extreme Digital Cinema screen (XD) — the circuit’s first in 2009, a party area next to the XD screen, and would convert from 35mm film to DCP servers projecting digital films and special satellite-fed events including classic film series. In 2014/5, the theater would be joined by eight restaurants built just to the south becoming a desitnation point for foodies and movie fans. Thanks to constant attention and innovative concepts, along with a stellar location, the theater looked to have a vibrant future heading into the 2020s.
For more than 35 years, Garland residents could enjoy drive-in movies at 3159 S. Garland Road. But as the home video era came into being, it was out with the Apollo Drive-In and in with the Wal-Mart 24-hour concept store, the Hypermart which opened at the former drive-in’s spot in 1989. But less than a mile away, movie lovers of Garland were delighted when a 60,000 square foot, 15-screen behemoth known as the Cinemark Hollywood U.S.A. was announced in 1992 just off of I-635 and Shiloh Road. Groundbreaking took place on June 11, 1992 with Cinemark mascot Front Row Joe, Garland’s Mayor Bob Smith, and others. The city teamed up with Cinemark to combine forces on a massive 800-space parking lot which would be used by Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) users during the daytime and moviegoers by night. The fact was that nothing was small or understated about the Cinemark Hollywood U.S.A. as it would become the largest megaplex outside of California when it launched at the end of 1992.
The theater opened on December 18, 1992 playing “Home Alone 2” as the first of 14 features. Its lobby featured neon palm trees on the west, a massive concession area, a neon Sunset Boulevard street sign over the arcade, and a Mama Rugi’s pizzeria with large seating area. There was also a 7’-by-7’ (3 monitor by 3 monitor) video screen featuring trailers and live video. That monitor wall would be about the only casualty over the first 30 years of the theater’s operation as the theater remained remarkably consistent (other than two interior concession stands which were retained but not used for many years).
Nothing was subtle in the purple, green and orange color scheme inside or the well-lit ticket area outside which was trying to conjure up Hollywood’s past with homages to Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson, James Dean, Marlene Dietrich among them. Inside, lit frames of classic Hollywood stars were found next to the entrances of the theaters including theaters dedicated to Bogey and the Duke. But on opening night, people were blown away by the talking Front Row Joe trash can which had a variety of random phrases when trash was dispensed with. 23 years later, the trash can amazingly was still around though Joe’s trash-talking were apparently behind it.
The first competition for the USA came on May 21, 1996 when United Artists opened its superior Galaxy just an exit or two to the west of the Cinemark theater. The two battled it out for the best clearances for the next ten years. But with its six THX-certified auditoria — two with 80' screens — the UA Galaxy was a destination complex. More competition came in March of 1998, the mega-large AMC Mesquite 30 opened to the south also along I-635. With all stadium-seating, the megaplex was draining business from both Garland theaters.
Then in 2005, Garland got the high-tech AMC Firewheel 18. The Cinemark Garland was aging quickly as superior theaters were easily reachable via highway and the circuit finally decided to downgrade the theater after 15-years of first-run service to a pretty awesome sub-run discount house. The theater would temporarily drop to just 14-screens as the theater leased out theater one to a non-profit house of worship. It would also try Spanish-subtitled American films for a period to reach the fast-growing Hispanic population in the area. Both concepts didn’t work out and the theater continued as a mainstream dollar house into the mid-2010s. Its biggest change came when the theater was able to make the conversion from scratchy second-run 35mm prints to all-digital projection allowing for 3D exhibition and better quality presentation. While many early 1990s theaters had changed hands or closed altogether, the Cinemark remained vaiable as it neared its 25th anniversary.
In 1983, the fast-gowing Dallas suburb of Carrollton had just surpassed 50,000 citizens and projected to exclipse 80,000 by 1990. In 1970, it had just 13,855 people and was served by a twin-screen drive-in, the Rebel, and an old downtown movie theater, the Plaza. In Carrollton’s growth spurt, the Trinity Mills / Old Denton Road would receive an astonishing 21 movie screens. It would start with General Cinema’s Furneaux Creek Village 7. That would prove so successful that the firm would plop down another theater caddy corner to the Furneaux called the GCC Carrollton Towne Centre 6 – generally known simply as the GCC Carrollton 6. And Cinemark would create its Movies 8 at Trinity Mills positioning it as a sub-run discount house.
Starting with Furneaux Creek, developer Paul Broadhead announced the $12 million Furneaux Creek Village late in 1982. General Cinema Corp. and three restaurants were first announced with the GCC Furneaux Creek Cinemas 7 launching on December 9, 1983. The theater was at 2625 Old Denton Rd. It opened with Yentl, Christine, Sudden Impact, Never Say Never Again, and a Smurfs film. Despite limited street visibility, the theater was an immediate hit as people loved the dining and shopping alternatives including book store in the cozy Furneaux Creek. The shopping center had a subdued architectural feel and the GCC cinema used understated and dark color palette creating a calm and abnormally darker than average lobby environment. GCC would use its business strategy to plop down another multiplex where one was doing brisk business. It had done this at the Town East Mall in Mesquite, Northpak Center and Redbird Mall in the DFW area.
Caddy corner to Furneaux Creek Village, a 182,000 square foot, non-descript shopping strip called Carrollton Towne Centre was announced in 1986. GCC would take a well-hidden 25,175 square foot spot tucked away in the back of that strip. The theater was brighter than its neighbor. That said, the arcitecturally-bland Carrollton 6 matched the benign shopping center launching July 24, 1987. The theater had mediocre sound options and wasn’t a destination theater by any stretch. But GCC had tight control of the Carrollton zone with its 13 screens caddy corner from one another. Success was rather short-lived.
Furneaux Creek’s creator Broadhead had now moved on to chairman of upstart movie circuit, Cinemark. He and LeRoy Mitchell made what they called a “risky move” by encroaching on the Carrollton zone. In 1989, the three-year old circuit decided to launch an 8-screen subrub discount house walking distance from the Furneaux Creek shopping center at 1130 W. Trinity Mills Rd. The city had gone from one screen in 1983 to 21 screens when the Cinemark opened Nov. 10, 1989. And the risk was possibly too great as all three theaters would fall on very hard times fairly quickly.
Just to the North in Lewisville, less than five miles away on Interstate 35, a retail nexus would form around the Vista Ridge Mall – the DFW area’s newest and largest mall which opened in October of 1989. It included a 12-screen first-run Cinemark theater as multiplexes were giving way to megaplexes of ten or more screens. Within five years, the Lewisville zone would have 30 first-run screens and one discount house. The better-built megaplex-era theaters would erode film audiences from the multiplex-era Carrollton theaters. Also, population shifts in the 1990s saw a surge in Asian residents and the marketplace would alter Furneaux Creek’s target demographic. In short, the three Carrollton theaters would all be at the wrong place at the wrong time each failing to reach the end of their original lease periods.
The GCC Carrollton was the first casualty closing in September of 1998 as GCC focused on its Furneaux Creek operation. The GCC Carrollton would have the distinction of showing “Simon Birch” as among its last offerings. Birch would close the iconic General Cinema NorthPark I theater less than a month later. Things weren’t any better for Cinemark as it closed up shop at its Movies 8 in July of 2000, a rare misstep for the firm. And the third and final theater in the Carrollton zone would drop just three months later.
GCC was doomed with its multiplex-centric business model. The GCC Furneaux Creek got a vote of confidence on October 5, 2000 when four GCCs were shuttered leaving just the Galleria, the Furneaux, and the newly-built Irving Mall 14 in the DFW area. Two weeks later, GCC rethought the plan and closed the Galleria and Furneaux Creek. The last show was “Bait” with no patrons for the other six shows as the theater closed quickly and quietly before the evening’s posted showtimes could run.
It was hard to imagine that the Carrollton zone had gone down so quickly. Star Cinema took on the Furneaux Creek very briefly openning in November of 2000 with Little Nicky and six other features. But that operation closed quickly as Star Cinema moved to the former GCC Town East and then, finally, to the former AMC Towne Crossing before surrendering to the megaplex era. A hastily-created Cinema Grill by a fledgling circuit of the same name came into the Furneaux Creek basically removing rows of seats to put in tables for full-kitchen service movies with meals. That launched May 8, 2002 but was a quick failure.
The Movies 8 became a non-profit Covenant Church. The Furneaux Creek was completely gutted revealing just a giant hand-painted General Cinema logo on its back wall. It was converted into a vibrant Korean market. And this listing for the GCC Carrollton Towne Center was home to a gym which failed. The former Carrollton 6 was vacant for long stretches prior to and after being a gym, in part, due to the hidden nature of the building.
In the 1930s, George Myers was everything to the, then, small town of Carrollton, Texas. The grocer/mayor/postmaster showed outdoor films before carving out a space in his downtown grocery store with post office to show indoor films at 1110 W. Main Street. The show-store was purchased by A.R. Lowery and his wife, Vera who replaced the benches with seating at the Plaza Theater. Their 8-year old son, John, made news when he made it to the final chapter of a western serial with a broken leg. Not long after A.R. Lowrey passed away, Vera and John, would decide to operate a larger theater, the “new” Plaza opening December 23, 1949 as the town had surged to just over 1,000 residents.
The Raymond Smith architected facility would prove to be well-built as the building was virtually unchanged over the next 45 years of operation. The original projector made it through the entire run of the building. Carrollton would grow from 1,000 residents to 93,000 in the 1990s. In a 55-year family theatrical career, the Lowery’s with their two Plaza Theaters would survive competition from the nearby twin-screen drive-in, the Rebel, as well as three multiplexes created in suburban Carrollton. Vera would continue working at the theater until age 92 and son, John, finally closed the theater – operating as a sub-run discount dollar house — with “The Mask” as the theater was reaching its 45th anniversary. The veteran operator sold the theater to a church-backed group who would convert the theater into a live performance venue.
A marker outside of the theater commemorates the Lowrey’s 45-year operation at the Plaza. Continuing in 1985 as the Plaza Music Theatre, the Grapevine Opry entertained locals until 2002. Two local businessmen took on the Plaza renaming it the Plaza Arts Center. It has space for local artists to display work regularly and hosted some events and local events. The Plaza has continued to the mid-2010s where the facility continues to entertain Carrollton in the city’s downtown looking almost unchanged after more than 65 years.
In 1985, the Herring Group of Dallas and Homart Development Co. announced that they would develop DFW’s largest shopping mall, a 1.4 million square foot center known as Vista Ridge. The mall opened in October of 1989 and the Cinemark wasn’t far behind opening that same month. The mall theater was glitzy and gaudy resplendent in purple, red, and green neon tubing. A 3x3 CRT monitor bank had 10 minutes of movie previews and then three minutes of live video where patrons could see themselves larger than life. The theater had an arcade area, large concession stand, and two larger theaters for the biggest films that week. The only competition was a ten-screen theater up the road which became a discount house in the Garden Park Shopping Center.
The theater was an amazing hit. James Terry McIlvain signed autographs during a screening of “Pure Country.” Scott Bakula showed up of “Quantum Leap” fame and signed autographs. And the theater was doing such stellar business that AMC Theatres announced in 1993 it would build its first ever 20-screen theater across the street from Vista Ridge Mall. While that project was dropped as AMC turned its attention to its AMC Grand Project further south on Interstate 35, two new theaters opened across from each other with Trans-Texas’ Vista Ridge 8 and UA’s Lakepointe 10 both opening the same day on December 16, 1994.
Cinemark would take on the Vista Ridge 8 converting it to a sub-run, discount house. The competing Super Saver discount house in Garden Park would close. But in December of 2000, Rave Motion Pictures would open its first ever theater with the high-tech Hickory Creek 16 just to the North on I-35. It was game on and Cinemark’s property began to age quickly compared to the Rave.
Instead of trying to refresh the 17 year old property and do a full digital conversion, Cinemark created a new build Cinemark 15 at Vista Ridge Mall opening with a soft launch on September 20, 2006. That theater would supplant the Movies 12 which remained empty for some time.
The Studio Movie Grill Lewisville was originally going to be AMC’s first 20-screen super-megaplex. When Vista Ridge Mall opened in 1989, Lewisville received its second 10-plus screen theater with Cinemark Theater’s Vista Ridge 12 inside the mall. Because the shopping complex drew people from a wide circle including Lewisville, Flower Mound, Carrollton, Coppell, Lake Dallas, Corinth and Highland Village, there was room for another theater. So in January 1993, AMC announced an exterior multiplex across the highway down from Corporate Drive that would be a 48,000 sqaure feet 20-screen multiplex the likes of which the DFW area hand’t seen.
In May of 1993, AMC turned its attention to a 24-screen AMC Stemmons Crossroads project that would become the game-changing AMC Grand 24 opening in 1995. AMC walked away from the 20-screen Lewisville project leaving an opening for another operator to build a megalplex in that spot. United Artists stepped up with a smaller-sized concept theater that would serve as a blueprint for its expansion within DFW over the next several years.
UA concentrated its 1994-1997 growth with 9-to-11 screen builds that were more destination theaters then the generic, neighborhood 8-plexes that it had built in the early to mid-1990s. And the UA Lakepointe 10 would be its first scheduled to open followed by a similar facility in Grand Prairie (1995), a grander location near Garland (1996), and two in Fort Worth (1997). Meanwhile, Trans-Texas announced a simultaneous project on the opposite side of the freeway. Trans-Texas' 8-screen theater was of more modest scale and it was a race to see which would open first.
To demonstrate that it was out of the business of building generic boxy theaters, UA got a waiver from the City of Lewisville to include a laser lighting system that would adorn the main entrance and be visible to the busy adjoinging highway. The UA Lakepointe 10’s translucent theater canopy was designed by Runyon Architects and Associates. It was 10 feet tall and 100 feet long projecting 14 color patterns that could be set to music. The UA theater launched December 16, 1994 with features including Speechless, Dumb and Dumber, Drop Zone and Disclosure though would not have its official grand opening celebration until January 26, 1995. Trans-Texas' Vista Ridge 8-plex opened across the street on December 16, 1994 with sub-runs and would go first run then back to sub-run discount when it became part of the Cinemark circuit.
The first shoe to drop in the Lewisville area was the first multiplex in the Rand/Hollywood/Silver Cinema 10-screen discount house in the Garden Park Shopping Center. But UA ran into financial difficulty as a circuit as the century closed while others easily outflanked the chain’s 10-screen effort. Rave Motion Pictures opened a state-of-the-art high tech megaplex just to the north of the Lakepointe opening in 2000 which took much of the non-mall, non-discount moviegoing audience with it. With Cinemark scheduled to open a brand new facility at Vista Ridge Mall, and a 14-plex just to the North in Denton, the writing was on the wall. UA closed the Lakepointe and many other theaters across DFW and around the country.
But all was not lost as Studio Movie Grill repositioned the Lakepointe as a movie and dining event place called the Studio Movie Grill Lewisville opening May 2007. The theater was in a contentious zone with AMC opening its Highland Village theater to the west in December of that year, Obviously with many theaters within exits of each other (the Vista Ridge Mall 15 Lewisville, the Lewisville 8 discount house, Cinemark 14 in Denton, the Silver Cinemas Golden Triangle, and the Rave Hickory Creek 16), SMG had its work cut out for it. Redesigning the complex as an 8-plex with full kitchen, the theater pulled off the task with aplomb keeping the theater relevant into the mid-2010s and beyond.
The Trans-Texas Vista Ridge Movies 8 opened at an inopportune time for the fledgling circuit. Across the highway, United Artists opened its far superior Lakepointe 10 on the same day that the T-T Vista Ridge was having its grand opening celebration. The Vista Ridge had scheduled sub-run films for the public to get a free look at facility. But with competition just yards away from the Cinemark Vista Ridge 12 inside of the Vista Ridge Mall, the UA Lakepointe and by decade’s end, Rave Motion Pictures just to the North, Trans-Texas bailed and Cinemark took on the struggling 8-plex. It repositioned it as a sub-run discount house. With the departure of the Rand/Hollywood/Silver Cinema 10-screen discount house in the Garden Park Shopping Center, this theater had found its audience continuing strong into the mid-2010s.
United Artists Circuits purchased 9.5 acres near the southeast corner of Jupiter Road and LBJ Freeway in northeast Dallas to launch a destination theater that eventually opened May 21, 1996 called the Galaxy. While much of the attention was going to 24 and 30 screen megaplexes of the era, UA was more conservative building 9-11 screen complexes. UA built its Lakepointe 10 theater in Lewisville opening in December 1994 and would build a similar facility in Grand Prarie (Aug.1995) along with two Fort Worth complexes opening in 1997 with the Eastchase 9 and the Fossil Creek 11.
Much like the UA Grand Prairie, the circuit was going after a contemporary Cinemark multiplex in the Hollywood USA 14/15. With screen count already in favor of the established Cinemark property, UA spent more on this property than the afforementioned theaters. The costs of the Galaxy sailed past $12 million with two huge 750 seat auditoria with 76.5 foot wide screens and 50-foot high ceilings affectionately called the 80 foot screens, eclipsing the 75 foot screens at the CInemark 17. The two auditoria had the second largest screens next to only the outdoor Astro Drive-In.
The theater made a statement, THX certification was found in six auditoria where digital sound was vibrant. There was stadium seating with rocking-chair padded seats in all houses, something that UA had eschewed in the past. A crazy large dual-sided concession area, gaming area, two additional concession stands close to theaters 5 & 9 – the largest houses, and a 38-seat Showscan ride simulator theater that rounded out the technologically innovative theater.
Opening night was wild on May 21, 1996. With eight theaters ready for usage, Mission: Impossible was screened on each screen a day before its actual opening and the theater attracted sell out audiences. People showed up, they filled the auditorium and went on to the next auditorium. The theater made $22,500 in ticket revenue selling out all shows until 11:45p.
Because of the size of the large screens, Star Wars fans camped out at the Galaxy as members of “Countdown Dallas” waited the highly anticipated 1999 film. The theater had many sell-outs and delivered the goods. The Galaxy 9 would become the Galaxy 10 when the Showscan novelty house was converted into a small screen. UA all but vanquished its Cinemark competitor as the Hollywood USA was downgraded to sub-run dollar house status. UA had all the new clearances it wanted for new films.
But United Artists, itself, fell on hard times and the circuit dropped theater after theater in the area and around the country. Even the Countdown Dallas group abandoned the theater for 2002’s Phantom Menace sequel opting for the DLP-centric Cinemark Legacy. UA which once had theaters all over Dallas would be taken over by Regal and would have only the Galaxy after leaving the Plaza, the Keystone, the MacArthur Marketplace, and all of its multiplexes including the North Star in Garland. Regal didn’t do justice to the Galaxy as THX designation went away. The cash-strapped Regal chain didn’t do much over the next ten years to refresh the property and weekday audiences found the 900 slot parking lot with more new cars for the adjoining car dealership than patrons.
Meanwhile, AMC would upgrade its 30-screen Mesquite property with a IMAX-branded screen, a bar, fork-and-screen full-kitchen houses, and recliners. More people were drifting away from the Galaxy. But there was hope as in 2015, the theater would receive its first major refresh when recliner seating was announced in March of 2015 to come in time for the big summer films. Because Regal owned the theater instead of the former practice of leasing, it realized that the theater might have an opportunity to remain vibrant heading into the 2020s.
The $5 million, sub-run discount Starplex Mesquite Cinema 10 opened on July 27, 1996 at Highway 80 and Belt Line Road. On its opening weekend, films were free (Flipper, James and the Giant Peach, The Arrival, Heaven’s Prisoners, Celtic Pride, Dragonheart, Executive Decision, Toy Story, Homeward Bound 2, Truth About Cats & Dogs, and Primal Fear). Auditorium size ranged from 125 to 450 seats. The theater had DTS, Dolby Digital and SDDS at its opening with wall-to-wall screens. '
The theater was the cousin to the Starplex Irving which had also just opened. Tickets were $1 before 6 p.m. and $1.50 after 6 p.m. with bargain Tuesdays. Its nearest subrun discount competition would be from the Cinemark Big Town five miles away and AMC Towne Crossing four miles away. They would both go out of business in 1999 and 1998, respectively. The Starplex chain would later add a first-run theater in Forney just 11 miles away.
AMC built its first Mesquite multiplex in 1985 with its Towne Crossing 8. It was competing with nearby multiplexes by United Artists and two by General Cinema Corporation (GCC). With newer megaplexes coming into style, the circuits noticed a “migration” away from the aging Town East area multiplexes in 1995/6. In 1996, AMC announced a bombshell which would forever change moviegoing in the area and it was the AMC Mesquite 30.
The 6,360-seat AMC Mesquite 30 would be built on a 33-acre site at the confluence of Interstate 635 and U.S. Highway 80. Unlike many projects prior, AMC would own the land instead of leasing to give the project a bit more permanance than, say, its 24-screen Grand that it would open and then abandon upon the end of its 15-year lease. The 131,000-square-foot theater was one of three 30-screen behomeths along with Houston and L.A. and would soon be joined by a project in Grapevine. Plans for a stand-alone 30-screen Frisco theater were scrapped and later became the 24-screen AMC Stonebriar Mall.
The Mesquite AMC theater would be one exit removed from the Mesquite Championship Rodeo which was receiving a hotel and conference center while a country-western themed nightclub was being built. Befitting of the area, the AMC Mesquite 30 was designed with country western themes. Rest rooms had a rustic old west vibe and the northern concession stand was in the old west general store corridor while the other two were tropical rain forest and computer-centric concepts. A large circular courtyard was built around 18 ticket stands, almost unusable on the many hot days in Mesquite. Initial capacity for the auditroia ranged from 118 to 603 patrons. The project was delayed about eight months and actually opened more than three months after the Grapevine project which had opened in December of 1997. As a result, Mesquite employees were sent to train in the very similar Grapevine Mills 30.
Parking and security issues plagued the AMC Grand and the Mesquite had a different concept. Two golf carts and later Segways used by security guards would monitor the 6,000 car parking lot. And the most distant parking lot could be closed off on less busy weekdays. Launching on March 20, 1998, the impact of the mega-successful Mesquite 30 on the multiplexes just two exits away on I-635 was catastrophic. None would survive past the calendar year as AMC would shutter its own Towne Crossing 8, followed by the GCC Town East 6, the UA Town East 6, and the GCC Town East 5. In January of 1999, Cinemark would shutter its nearby dollar house leaving AMC as the only first-run circuit in the area. It was a competitive coup de grâce.
Even without serious competition, in June of 2009, the theater got its first major retrofit as it would retrofit its largest screen desginated as an IMAX experience auditroium. While these screens were derided by many as “faux Max” screens, they added branding and additional revenue to the location. But an even more grand retrofit occurred in 2013/2014 with AMC — now under Dalian Wanda Group — placed a lot of capital in refreshing theaters nationwide.
The Mesquite 30 was totally revamped becoming a hybrid facility with complete kitchen serving the dine-in “Fork & Screen” theaters, a new MacGuffins Bar area for use by patrons of the “Cinema Suites” reserved seating theaters generally with R-rated features, and some traditional general theaters where patrons brought in traditional snack bar food. Recliner seats greatly reduced overall seat count in the Fork & Screen and Cinema Suite houses. The main concession area received high-tech self-serve Coca-Cola mixing stations and Icee dispensers while the seldom-open auxiliary snack bars were closed. The concept launched February 20, 2014 and showed the theater’s dedication to keeping the property vibrant into the 2020s.
1995 was the start of the megaplex boom with the AMC Grand 24 getting the major attention but also with the UA Grand Prairie 10, the Loews Cityplace, and two 17-screen theaters by Cinemark with the Grapevine Tinseltown USA 17 and this theater, the Cinemark 17. Cinemark was familiar with the area as the former AMC Northtown in the Northtown Mall was still operating as a discount house. But the Cinemark 17 was actually supposed to be in Dallas and not Farmers Branch. This theater was targeted as an 18-screen, $30 million development at Inwood Road and Forest Lane just three miles to the east. But the city of Dallas blocked the theater so it ended up in Farmers Branch instead.
The Cinemark 17 became an 83,000-square-foot complex featuring 17-screens and costing $18 million. The theater debuted July 28, 1995 a bit over two months later than the AMC Grand. The 17’s two largest auditoria each seated 634 with high-backed, rocking-chair seats. The two largest Cinemark 17 theaters had stadium-seating with “radius curve” screens that were promoted as the 75 foot screens at 32-by-75-foot screens. Moviegoers were “treated” to Waterworld as the first regular feature on the 75’ screen.
Like the Grand, the Cinemark folks promised at least one art film at all times in the 130-seat smaller theater(s). And like the Grand, that really wasn’t always consistent. The snack bar area had expanded offerings including a pizzeria (Mama Rugis), cappuccino bar (“Java Wally's”) and would go on to have short-order cook items, salads, and ice cream. The massive arcade featured contemporary games that, as of 2015, still featured rotation of games to stay current.
The Cinemark 17 saw more impressive multiplexes come in including Cinemark’s own Legacy while other contemporaries including the AMC Grand 24 or the Macarthur Marketplace shuttered or were dropped by their circuits. Give Cinemark credit as it just kept updating the 17. In August of 1999, an IMAX 3-D theater was added showing T-Rex: Back to the Crustaceans. (Unlike later IMAX theaters added at local AMC theaters, this was an actual IMAX theater.) The theater also was renovated to included stadium seating in the smaller auditoria. The odd mix of sound systems was replaced by all digital multichannel audio and switched to digital projection including classic films and Fathom events sent via satellite. As the theater neared its 20th anniversary, it seemed every bit as vibrant as the day it opened.
Just from newspaper articles and ads, this theater started out as a concept by Trans-World Enterprises called “The Carrousel,” a family entertainment strip at the northwest corner of Collins Avenue and Pioneer Parkway. The Carrousel’s restaurants would take up 12,500 square feet and at the end of the strip was a 10,800 square foot quad-plex with 250 seats each. Groundbreaking ceremonies were held for the million dollar facility on February 13, 1973 to open prior to year’s end. The lobby was unusual and the concept was a pre-cursor to the better-integrated notion of movies plus meal with the money staying in house that was a trend in the early 21st Century. The projection was supposedly designed to be automated so that personnel could be efficiently cross-trained for the entire operation. The Family Carrousel Entertainment complex concept — which was supposed to spread nationwide and most immediately to a planned Carrousel in Coffeyville, Kansas — doesn’t appear to have gained much traction.
Based on the ads, the theater has bookings listed as the Pioneer Cinema in 1976 and it appears that the theater transfers to the fledgling Charles Boren Circuit and it’s renamed the Arlington Cinema IV. The theater was then operated independently of the adjoining strip center businesses. This operator briefly moves the theater to an odd pricing structure where one screen is designated as the dollar screen, one is designated as the $2 screen for long-running hit films, and two have opening-week features at $2.50. Tuesdays were designated as bargain nights. In mid-March of 1978, the theater goes totally to sub-run, dollar house operation.
In 1980, the Plitt circuit takes on the theater. It flops the name to Cinema Arlington IV and then simply Cinema Arlington. It does try to return to first-run during its operation. As a circuit, Plitt Southern would succumb to newcomers within DFW to circuits including Cinemark before going out of operation. Not surprisingly, the Cinema Arlington would become part of the Cinemark family where it receives its final name of Movies 4. Cinemark tags the theater as a sub-run dollar house facility. Apparently, Titanic was quite the hit for the theater in 1998. The moviehouse may have ended as an independent as its theatrical era ended. One might surmise that the theater fulfilled an initial 15-year lease followed by a 10-year lease before eventually becoming a non-profit house of worship. The facility was still a house of worship as of the mid-2010s with its original attraction board still apparent on the Collins St. signage.
Again, this is based on the ads and some articles as this theater wasn’t on my frequently visited list.
The General Cinema Corporation (GCC) Town East 6 was a theater opening in May of 1985 just yards from its GCC Town East 5 outside of Town East Mall. The theater’s development was occurring at the time when Mesquite became one of the fast-growing communities in the state. The theater would close in August 1998 when AMC changed film-going in Mesquite forever. In the Mesquite zone of DFW film exhibition, however, the top dog for more than three decades was General Cinema.
GCC’s first foray into Dallas was when it was still called General Drive-In opening Big Town Cinema in February of 1964 adjoining the five-year old Big Town Mall, Dallas’ first enclosed shopping center. Ten years later, it was operating just outside of Mesquite’s second mall, the Town East Mall opening June 28, 1974. GCC’s Big Town theater went to discount status. Traffic was packed around the Town East area and retail complexes popped up overnight. There was a need for more than just two first-run auditoria. United Artists (UA) was the first circuit to challenge GCC with its Town East 6 opening on June 4, 1982 in the nearby Driftwood Shopping Center.
Now battling for clearances, UA won big summer clearances getting “Star Trek II”, “E.T.” and “Blade Runner” for its opening month. The GCC Town East I & II would close briefly to re-open on December 17, 1982 transitioning from a two-screen to a five-screen operation. But at a pad across the highway from Town East was the Towne Crossing Center that would deliver the AMC Towne Crossing 8. GCC didn’t take kindly to a third circuit coming into its flagship zone.
In 1983, the Outlet Mall at Town East was announced by John Shotsman and in 1984, GCC would make its tactical moves to secure the zone. In 1984, Town East V was closed again and totally gutted becoming a prototype for many almost identical theaters which General Cinema would create or retrofit and re-re-opening December 7, 1984. And to mark its territory much like the game of Risk, just yards away it was constructing another six-screen theater launching May 24, 1985. That theater was an outparcel building to the Outlet Mall at Town East called the GCC Town East 6 with the exterior architected by Milton Powell & Associates which actually launched three months ahead of the AMC eight-screen Towne Crossing. It also shared its grand opening date with the North Hills 7 inside that mall in North Richland Hills.
Now with two Town East 6’s, one Town East 5 and the AMC 8 in Mesquite, confusion for consumers was palpable as the theaters were close in both name and proximity. But business was brisk with business from Rockwall, east Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Forney and even Terrell. Mesquite was a true cinema lovers destination. For the Town East 6, “Home Alone” (1990) would become a massive money maker and was interlocked on three of the six screens. A rarity for the six-plex. And GCC had weathered the competition in the short term with its concept of plopping down a multiplex and then another multiplex nearby if needed as it had at the Redbird Mall in South Dallas, or its Northpark I/II & III/IV in the Central Zone in Dallas. But that would all change.
As a harbinger of bad karma, the Outlet Mall of Town East tried a name change and went out of business within four years. After a planned 110-lane bowling alley didn’t occur in that space, the building was repurposed to a strip shopping center, Home Depot, etc. This didn’t destroy the GCC Town East 6 but the lack of foot traffic for years at that space plus the construction didn’t help either. Worse yet for the Town East 6 was that the Garland area would get two megaplexes to the North (Cinemark in 1992 and UA in 1996). Then AMC delivered the knockout blow with its 30-screen megaplex AMC Mesquite just two exits to the south in 1998. That would end the AMC Towne Crossing. Starplex Cinemas would add a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney. Megaplexes also came to Rockwall and Terrell got a multiplex. The Town East multiplexes were toast but how long would they last?
General Cinema closed the Town East Six as classes went back into session in 1998 ending the theater’s life though outliving the life of its neighboring outlet mall by more than ten years. The theater would eventually be gutted and transformed into a retail space where it and the former Towne Crossing 8 both hosted waterbed stores at some point in their lives. And almost as suddenly the Town East Five left prior to Christmas of 1998. The Big Town Cinema out-survived both of GCC’s Town East properties closing as a Cinemark discount cinema in January of 1999. For General Cinema, it was the beginning of the end as the circuit would collapse under the weight of a faded multiplex business concept in a megaplex world.
Star Cinemas would re-re-re-open the original GCC Town East in December of 2001 closing in June of 2002 to hop across to the former AMC Towne Crossing operating quietly as the Lone Star Cinema briefly. The Town East V would be quietly excised from the shopping center while the other three multiplexes lived on as retail stores. But the GCC Town East 6 represented the circuit’s last stand and how Town East and Mesquite became DFW’s third most attended zone in the DFW area in the 1980s.
FunAsiA Richardson is a theater/restaurant/dance hall/event center catering to the Southeast Asian population in the northeastern portion of the Dallas suburb. The operators transformed a moribund six-screen theater which had been open just nine years (1989-1998) into a vibrant cultural destination that proved to be a success beginning in late 2002 and running into the mid-2010s as of this writing. The three-screen theater played contemporary Hindi, Telegu, Tamil, and some English language films while the FunAsiA hosted events ranging from live concerts, beauty pageants, cricket viewing, weddings, and parties.
Backing up to August of 1988, General Cinema Corp. (GCC) signed a lease for a 25,442-square-foot six-screen movie theater across the street from the Richardson Square Mall where it had been operating an aging three-screen theater since October of 1977 . The new six-plex would be loosely patterned after a Town East GCC Theater and fairly similar to the Collin Creek Mall theater to the northwest in Plano. The theater launched on October 6, 1989 with “Turner & Hooch”, “An Innocent Man,” “Night Game,” “In Country,” “Batman,” and “Dead Poet’s Society.”
The Richardson 6 did have at least one thing going for it: as one newspaper critic said, the theaters were an improvement over the Richardson Square Mall Cinema triplex but “almost anything would be.” And the theater was the “A” house while the Richardson Square Mall III became the subrun discount house trying to get to the end of its 20-year lease. The mall cinema came close closing in April of 1995. With all of the movie traffic across the street and more buildings sandwiched in, parking became tight for the Richardson. GCC was able to have overflow parking at neighboring Mervyn’s Department Store with signage directing folks there.
The Richardson was chugging along even after a rash of GCC closings in 1998. But Black Thursday hit on October 5, 2000 – just one day shy of the theater’s ninth anniversary. GCC closed all three remaining Tarrant Country locations with the Arlington Square 8, Central Park 8, and Ridgmar and kept three of four Dallas County locations operating. Unfortunately, drawing the short straw was the GCC Richardson 6. With no new product or advertising, the closing was not unexpected and all shows after 5:00p cancelled that final evening for a quick-as-possible closing. Features were removed from the attraction board even before the showtimes of the final showings of “Almost Famous,” Chicken Run,” and four other films were scheduled to play.
The remaining DFW GCC theaters getting an endorsement and staying open were the GCC Galleria, Furneaux Creek and Irving Mall. Two weeks later, only the Irving Mall remained open as GCC was on life support in DFW. But good news was ahead for the GCC Richardson. With a growing Southern Asian population in the area, FunAsiA took on the theater and with a $1.6 million overhaul, turned the three theaters on the building’s west side to show new releases from Bollywood and had video capabilities for special events and weddings. The other three theaters were turned into an Indian dance club called Ghungroo and restaurant as well as space/banquet hall for weddings and special events opening in December of 2002. So popular was FunAsiA that it opened a second location in Irving and another in Houston. The Irving operation would be consolidated to film offerings moving to a couple of screens at the Macarthur Marketplace but the original Richardson FunAsiA was still going strong into the mid-2010s with expansive food offerings.
The Caruth Plaza Cinema was an underperforming twin-screen theater which opened as the Plitt Cinema in 1979 across the street from the General Cinema Company’s (GCC) Northpark III & IV. It was acquired by GCC in 1984 from Plitt and converted to a triplex and ultimately closed early in 1992 under pressure from superior theaters just yards away.
For decades, Dallas film exhibition was controlled by the Interstate Circuit. In the single-screen era, Interstate had the best movie palaces and it generally picked suburban locations well. But a new breed of twin-screens and then multiplexes doomed the Interstate business model and Plitt Theatres Inc. purchased the last of the ABC-Interstate theaters in March of 1978. Its first decision was to not renew the lease for the Wilshire Theater it had just acquired leaving it with only the single-screen Medallion within Dallas’ most lucrative theater area known as the “Central Zone.” But Plitt would rectify that moving into the newly-created and nearly 200,000 square foot Caruth Fashion Center. Plitt was moving into hostile territory, however, with General Cinema’s wildly-successful Northpark I & II just a quarter of a mile away within eyeball range and the Northpark III & IV directly across the street. These two theaters were said to be the most lucrative in the entire state of Texas.
Billed by Plitt as the “finest theatre complex in the Southwest,” the Plitt Cinema could have been a game-changer. But Plitt claimed just 15,558 square feet of the 197,050 square foot Caruth Plaza and carved out a benign twin-screen theater. Had Plitt been bolder and created a multiplex at that time, their entire fortunes might have been different. But the twin was created with Plitt Cinema’s Auditorium One having 700 seats and 70mm capability. Auditorium Two had around 500 seats. And upon opening, their “finest theatre” claim was quite unjustified. The Plitt could boast of being the best cinema on its side of the street – being the only one on its side of the street — but even that would change within ten years. The twin-screener was an underachiever for Plitt. But it was the only theater at Park Lane and U.S. 75 to have an attraction sign (Alfred Nasher wouldn’t allow gaudy signage at either his Northpark East or West turf) so it was arguable that this was the most visible and the easiest to find of the three theaters.
Grand opening for the Plitt Cinema was on December 14, 1979 with “The Jerk” and “1941.” The Spielberg “1941” film was a coup for Plitt as the theater served as a means to get clearances away from the GCC competition across the street. But “1941” wasn’t quite the stellar success and was a portent of things to come for Plitt. The theater did have its moments. It had the sneak peak of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1981 and then had the southwest exclusive 70mm run of that film showing in Dolby stereo before anyone else with that format. And it had a 70mm success with the repertory “Sound of Music” screening. But having the theater in existence partly to block clearances from the competition just didn’t work out for anyone and within five years of its opening, Plitt sold the location to its rival GCC in May of 1984.
The Plitt was briefly renamed as the Caruth Twin operating for several months. GCC would close off theater two for remodeling as kids went back to school in 1984. On October 26th of 1984, GCC re-opened the now-twinned and smaller 500-seat auditorium. Converted into two, 225-seat auditoriums in the triplex, GCC had made movie-going at the Caruth Plaza even worse. During the remodel, the theater was renamed the General Cinema Caruth Plaza Cinema, its final name. And the original theater remained with minor changes later leading to 650 seats but still with 70mm projection.
It appeared that GCC had weathered the clearance battle well as it monopolized all the theaters situated near three of Park Lane & U.S. 75’s heavily trafficked four corners. But AMC and United Artists weren’t enamored of GCC having all of the money in the lucrative Northpark area. Caruth had developed the Glen Lakes area just one hotel removed from his Caruth Fashion Plaza about a quarter of a mile away. AMC would secure a spot for its eight-plex AMC Northpark (changed later to the AMC Glen Lakes) theater opening there in 1988. If that wasn’t bad enough for the GCC Caruth Plaza, the final nail in the coffin came when construction equipment was making noise you could hear inside of the GCC Caruth Plaza. That equipment was creating UA’s super-destination theater ultimately called the UA Plaza which was directly behind and shadowing over the cowering GCC Caruth Plaza. The UA Plaza opened in May 1989. It’s unclear why the GCC Caruth Plaza remained in operation with this far superior multiplex a bowling ball’s throw away other than stubbornness by GCC trying to get to the end of its lease.
The Caruth Plaza Cinema would finally get its mercy killing limping to a very quiet ending on January 12, 1992. It was unable to make it to the end of its lease period. The 70mm projector from Auditorium One and some other equipment would make the short trip across the street providing house four of the GCC Northpark III & IV with 70mm projection. That may have been the lasting value of the largely-forgotten Caruth Plaza Cinema.
General Cinema’s (GCC) Northpark East III & IV was the cousin to Northpark I&II coming online in 1974, nine years after the original twin, and just a bit over a quarter of a mile away. The theater was a success running just shy of 25 years. The original Northpark “West” I & II had changed movie-going forever begnining in 1965 in Dallas as the Downtown zone began a rapid descent and moviegoers went north to Dallas’ “Central Zone” of movie exhibition. But Northpark had company with other road show theaters including the UA 150 (1968) and Interstate’s Medallion Theater (1969) joining the veteran Interstate Wilshire Theater.
To reduce the strain on bookings, GCC decided to open a second twin Northpark theater. But with space tight on the west side of US 75 adjoining the wildly popular Northpark Mall, GCC headed east to a newly created spot in Northpark East created by the same folks who owned the mall, Alfred Nasher. The white brick theater was called the Northpark East III & IV and at the outset had premiere films and by the end of its lifecycle often was the downgraded location for films moving from the I&II though also having repertory 70mm film screenings.
The Northpark III & IV opened Nov. 1, 1974 with the films “Gold” and “Law and Disorder.” The theater was obscured somewhat by an adjacent outparcel building hurting view from busy U.S. 75. Meanwhile, Nasher’s architectural sensibilities would not allow for gaudy attraction signs so common to other GCC properties. Granted, the theater was classy and certainly not pretentious. Its style was harmonic with the Omniplan Northpark architectural jobs on both sides of the street. But, frankly, the new theater was a bit challenging to see. This would get even worse in 1977 when Nasher decided to build some high-rise buildings adjoining the two existing buildings. These buildings would completely obscure the theater from Park Lane which was the east-west road passing by the theater. For unsuspecting patrons showing up at the incorrect Northpark I & II, the directions to the III & IV could be frustrating and time-consuming depending on where your car was parked at the mall.
GCC stated that the two Northpark cinemas were the highest grossing theaters in the state of Texas for many years. And in 1984 it would purchase the Plitt Cinema within Caruth Plaza to have three theaters in close proximity. But the Northpark III & IV and Caruth Plaza Cinema got tremendous competition when the eight-screen AMC Northpark / Glen Lakes began operation half a mile away in 1988 and United Artists debuting its destination showplace, the UA Plaza right across the street from the III & IV and just behind the Caruth cinema early in 1989. All of the theaters brought their A-game moving people briskly and with great care through the ticket lines and lengthy concession lines. GCC’s response was to update both the III & IV and I & II in projects completed in 1989.
In 1992, GCC closed the Caruth Haven complex and its 70mm capability was added to the Northparks’s Cinema IV four meaning that 70mm could potentially be playing at all four GCC Northpark auditoria. Also in 1992, the III & IV was the first theater to try a reserved seating experiment with Ticketmaster. The theater roped off seats which would be held in reserve for Ticketmaster advance purchases. Same day Ticketmaster purchases added $1 to the cost of the seat which advanced day tickets were $1.35 from any Ticketmaster outlet or $1.85 for Ticketmaster by phone orders. This plan was a bit ahead of its time and a similar concept devised for Internet movie ticket purchase proved more successful.
Thanks in part to the GCC Northparks, the Central Zone was easily the most popular exhibition zone. But bad news was ahead for the aging twins in the 1990s and the ‘plexes at the turn of the century. All of the Central Zone theaters would fall into hard times as moviegoers flocked to a new breed of 24- and 30-screen megaplexes in the DFW area. The AMC Grand (1995) took its toll and up and down U.S. 75 theaters came online including Sony’s Cityplace (1995) to the South and Sony’s Keystone (1997) to the North. A small ray of light occurred for the III & IV on January 10, 1997. The DART Red Line train would be extended to Park Lane with the train’s temporary stop being the parking lot right behind the Northpark III & IV which the theater promoted. But that wouldn’t provide the needed uptick for the theater or its competitors in the Zone.
Weekday attendance was woeful for this location. Not surprisingly, the first shoe to drop within the Central Zone was the GCC III & IV shuttering June 28, 1998. For employees hopping across the street to the Northpark I & II, it would close next just four months later in a rash of GCC closures around the city including Carrollton, Collin Creek Mall, North Hills, Town East 6, and White Settlement. The UA Cine (2000), Medallion (2001), Plaza (2005) and the Glen Lakes (2006) would also go down for the count. An AMC theater inside of the Northpark mall would open (2006) carrying the Northpark cinema nameplate forward while the III & IV building would be transformed into Art Institute of Dallas space including a culinary school which was going strong into the mid-2010s.
For United Artists Circuit, 1984 was the year of the 8-plex. In the DFW area opening that year were the almost identical UA Las Vegas Trail 8, UA South 8, UA North Star 8 and this theater, the UA Bowen 8 in South Arlington. South Arlington and southern Grand Prairie to the east and southern Fort Worth to the west would become a major cinema-going corridor and the newly created Interstate 20 would soon create a retail nexus in South Arlington. The UA Bowen opened in 1984 with 2,160 seats and would be joined in December by the AMC Green Oaks, another eight-screen operation opening just about a mile away in 1984 as the circuits competed for clearances throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
General Cinema would open an eight-screener in 1986 and the Parks mall would come online within two years about two miles to the east. Up and down I-20, theaters sprouted at exits such as the Sony 20 & 287 multiplex to the west, the Cinemark Grand Prairie megaplex to the east, the Sony CityView at Bryant Irvin, et al. The Bowen did have an advantage in that a night at the theater could include dinner and/or drinks at the neighboring, popular sports-themed Bobby V’s Sports Gallery Café operated at that time by the Texas Rangers' baseball team manager. And UA put some money into the Bowen as the competition increased. Enhancements included digital sound, increased concessions, and new paint and carpeting. But by the mid-1990s, the Bowen was under competition from a new breed of megaplexes. UA, itself, would build stadium-seating destination theaters in Arlington with its Eastchase Parkway to the north and its Grand Prairie complex to the east.
The Bowen just didn’t have the architectural flair that UA was putting into its new theaters. Explained John Panzeca, vice president of United Artists Realty in charge of the company’s UA Plaza in Dallas project said of theaters such as Bowen 8, South and Vegas Trail, “For years we built theaters that were little, rectangular boxes…. I used to point with pride to how inexpensively I could get those projects to come in.” That said, UA unveiled a plan to resurrect the quickly aging Bowen 8. United Artists announced late in 1998 that it would expand the Bowen to a 14-screen, stadium-seating theater to open in spring of 1999. But AMC decided to outmaneuver UA by announcing a megaplex to open within the Parks at Arlington mall. UA was running into financial issues toward the end of the century and expansion plans such as those announced at the Bowen were cooling.
The Bowen 14 stadium seating expansion didn’t take place but the theater had a nice uptick in business because AMC would close the arch-rival Green Oaks in 1999 deciding against a lease renewal as it prepped the new mall megaplex. Fortunately for the UA Bowen, the AMC Parks wouldn’t open for another three years. Meanwhile, General Cinema would shutter all of its Tarrant County locations on October 5, 2000 including the nearby Arlington Park Square 8. There was no more turf fighting for film clearances for the Bowen until the Movie Tavern reopened the AMC property in summer of 2002. But foot traffic was seriously hurt when the AMC Parks finally launched on November 6, 2002.
With the Bowen’s 20-year lease coming due and 80’s era multiplexes shuttering all over DFW, employees had to sense doom. Neither the UA South 8 nor the UA Town East made it to the end of their 20-year leases. The UA Las Vegas Trail 8 was downgraded to dollar-house sub-run status and was going to close on its 20-year lease. Regal had taken on the struggling UA circuit and had no love for or money to invest in fading properties. The announcement for the UA came as the theater closed up shop on quickly after evening shows on December 14, 2003 fulfilling its lease. And within a year, hopes for a cinematic treasure rebirth at that location were shot down as Binks Construction invested $1.5 million in the property to convert the theater into a two-story self-storage building with elevator that was still operating in the mid-2010s. However, the UA Bowen was a profitable 8-screen multiplex bringing many fine films to the area and proved to be a survivor fulfilling its 20-year lease. And the popular neighboring night spot Bobby V’s was continuing to draw patrons into the mid-2010s.
In June of 1960, Sears not only decided to build its first retail store within Fort Worth, it created an entire subsidiary called Homart Development to construct shopping centers, the first of which was Seminary South Shopping Center on an 88-acre tract opening in 1962. In 1969, General Cinemas decided the time was right to construct two theaters simultaneously adjoining shopping centers. They were the Seminary South Center I & II in the Homart plaza and the Six Flags Cinema I & II in nearby Arlington, TX, a project that had delays opening in August of 1970. General Cinemas also opened in Homart’s other properties in DFW: inside of Valley View Mall in Dallas, outside of what would eventually be called the Parks Mall in Arlington, outside of the Town East Mall in Mesquite.
The GCC Seminary officially opened on Christmas Day 1969 and would expand in the 1970s to three screens as auditorium two was twinned. The location had an art gallery and a smokers area like many of the other theaters of that era. The Seminary South struggled due to competition from new enclosed malls in Fort Worth, Arlington, and North Richland Hills. Locals disparagingly referred to the area as “Cemetery South” as the center shed stores and hurt General Cinema’s revenues. But there was hope for General Cinema.
In 1985, Homart finally sold the underachieving shopping center to the Texas Centers Association which spent $25 million to purchase the property and another $25 million to convert the open air shopping center to an enclosed mall designed by Altoon and Porter, architects from California. The architects had a spot for GCC on the second floor right by one of the mall’s main entry points on the East side just up the escalator. The mall project finally opened on September 4th, 1987 as the Town Center Fort Worth with great optimism. Not long thereafter, General Cinema completed work on its new GCC Town Center 8 which opened and the chain closed its exterior Seminary South I, II, III. An attraction sign was visible from both the adjoining Interstate highway and access road heading southbound.
But ominously, Black Monday occurred October 19, 1987 and the economy regressed tremendously hurting low-to-middle class malls such as the Town Center. Within five years, the mall lost its first anchor in J.C. Penney’s which reported absurdly low revenue receipt totals. Many stores between also closed and even the mall’s original anchor grocery store went out of business. Town Center would regress to “greyfield” status, an industry term akin to a “dead mall” within just ten years of its opening. For General Cinema, which was about to get slaughtered by a new breed of megaplexes, there was no reason to continue operating the underachieving Town Center 8. On January 19, 1992, GCC pulled the plug prior to completing its fifth year.
Three other chains tried to rebrand the theater as a discount house which seemed reasonable given the mall’s remaining clientele. First up in 1992 was Trans-Texas calling the theater the Town Center Dollar Cinema 8 and running it as a sub-run operation. After they failed, next up were the Hollywood circuit and the Wallace circuit. Wallace even offered free seats to any TCU student from the nearby University to get anyone to show up for a period of time. But even the attraction of free seats in a ghost town mall, a theater in disrepair, presentations consisting of scratchy 35mm prints, and a wide variety of insects running freely up and down the aisles was not a good draw as the theater was mercifully shuttered in March of 2003. Only a miracle could save the cinema if not the entire complex from the wrecking ball.
José de Jesus Legaspi was the miracle worker transforming the moribund “Cemetery South” / “Town Sucker Mall” to La Gran Plaza, a vibrant Hispanic mall built with an intriguing tax rebate incentive deal allowing the project to flourish. The Mexican villa concept and business plan was visionary. And an important component from the outset was reviving the Town Center 8. Rebranded by Cinema Latino circuit with a May 1, 2003 grand opening as Cinema Latino de Fort Worth, the theater finally found its audience almost twenty years after its original opening when the mall relaunched as La Gran Plaza in 2005.
Cinema Latino de Fort Worth played first-run, mostly American films with Spanish subtitles; dubbed American films into Spanish (primarily animated and effects-centered action films); and some Mexican films that played exclusively at the theater. Cinema Latino also played all of the Pantelion releases from the studio created by Lionsgate and Grupo Televisa to reach American Hispanic audiences. The theater had big successes with Pantelion titles including “…instructions not included,” “From Prada to Nada” and “Pulling Strings.” By the 2010s, the circuit still was operating theaters in the Phoenix area, the Houston area, and the Denver area as well as its Fort Worth location. Given the state of the Town Center, few could have predicted that this multiplex could possibly have survived past its 25th anniversary, especially in a megaplex world. But as Bruce Willis said in the dubbed Die Hard, “¿Quién diría?” Who knew?
But, sadly, the Cinema Latino couldn’t come up with a lease renewal and the theater closed in December 22, 2014. The mall hoped to find a sixth operator for the multiplex as of 2015.
The UA Hulen Cinema 6 opened as an outparcel building just to southwest of Hulen Mall which, itself, had opened theatreless in 1977. Over the past four decades, the Hulen has bucked the trend of six-screen multiplexes built by the UA chain in 1982 as well as the eight screeners built in 1984. Virtually all of the 1980s' era UAs in the DFW area largely fulfilled 20-year lease cycles and were vacated with few remaining as theaters. The Town East 6 in Mesquite became a grocery store. The Walnut Hill 6 became a bar. And the South and Las Vegas Trail became churches. But the UA Hulen Cinema 6 was a survivor and then some.
The UA circuit showed confidence in its Hulen location even when challenged in 1985 by AMC which built its AMC Hulen 10 10-screen theater just about a mile to the south of the UA Hulen 6. To keep up with AMC — if not confuse potential moviegoers — UA would transform its Hulen operation to ten screens and the two co-existed into the 21st Century. Box office personnel would constantly have to help customers with a courteous, “You want the other Hulen 10 theater a mile away.”
Thirty years later, both locations are managing to continue in operation. The AMC Hulen 10 would eventually become the Starplex 10 after AMC left completing its 20-year lease. Starplex would opt for stadium seating with the theater continuing into the mid-2010s. Regal which had taken over UA theaters would vacate the Hulen just shy of 25 years. A great run and an opportunity for another circuit to swoop in.
In the first quarter of 2007, Movie Tavern followed up the success of its full-service Bedford location by giving the former UA Hulen a $2.5 million makeover with stadium-style seating with high-back leather rocker chairs, DTS digital sound, lobby with bar, plasma displays, outdoor patio, and full dinner menu to the auditoriums opening Sept. 7, 2007. The flagship location proved popular for the circuit and the theater would get yet another shocking make-over to keep the theater relevant with more modern megaplexes.
In 2012, the theater was completely remodeled including three brand new screens with the facility’s total now at 1,265 seats. Included was a larger lobby and an expanded bar area as well as improved presentation including MT-X digital projection with Real D 3D and surround sound capabilities in all auditoriums. To say that the former UA Hulen Cinema 6 is a survivor would be an understatement as Movie Tavern was trying to keep the theater strong heading into the 2020s.
The Las Vegas Trail retail area was conceived of in 1973 and opened theatreless in 1974 at Las Vegas Trail and where Interstate 30 is presently. However, in 1980, General Cinema Circuit (GCC) opened its GCC White Settlement about a mile away for people in west Fort Worth and White Settlement. United Artists decided to challenge in that zone in 1984 much as it had challenged GCC’s Redbird Mall theaters in Dallas. In fact, both the UA South 8 and Las Vegas Trail 8 were almost identical from the outside and not dissimilar from the North Star 8 in Garland and UA Bedford going up about the same time.
From an architectural point of view, the UA Las Vegas Trail, these UA cinemas were not destination theaters like Dallas' UA 150 well before it or Fort Worth’s Fossil Creek well after it but neighborhood theaters serving a specific radius. John Panzeca, vice president of United Artists Realty in charge of the company’s UA Plaza in Dallas project said of theaters such as Las Vegas Trail, Bowen, South and UA’s Northstar, “For years we built theaters that were little, rectangular boxes….I used to point with pride to how inexpensively I could get those projects to come in.”
But this theater made the circuit money and competed for clearances for top films favorably against the inferior GCC White Settlement out its outset in 1984 and for its first two years of operation. It had one 70mm screen that was THX certified and helped the circuit and theater land its biggest prize in 1984 with “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.“ GCC decided to build a second theater serving west Fort Worth to blunt the competition and have improved presentation to better compete with the superior facility roughly two miles away. It opened its Ridgmar V theater patterned closely after its remodeled Town East V cinema outside of the Mesquite Shopping Mall. The Ridgmar V, Las Vegas Trail 8, and White Settlement co-existed well together.
The threat of an AMC megaplex to be built inside of Ridgmar would have employees updating their resumes for the potential fall-out. Announced in 1999, the theater was to open in 2001. But it never occurred and the Ridgmar Mall’s grand re-opening took place without an interior theater. And the competition was down a multiplex as General Cinema had shuttered the White Settlement in 1998. And on October 5, 2000, there was no more competition for the UA as General Cinema closed the Ridgmar V. This was great news all the way to December of 2003 when Ridgmar redesigned once again and, this time, got its interior theater in the form of a Rave Motion Pictures 13-screen theater. The writing was on the wall for the Las Vegas Trail 8 which became a sub-run discount dollar house and the UA decided to simply honor its full 20-year lease without a renewal and the theater was closed. Like the UA South, the theater would be converted to a non-profit house of worship.