Park Theatre
3440 Cambie Street,
Vancouver,
BC
V5Z 2W8
3440 Cambie Street,
Vancouver,
BC
V5Z 2W8
5 people
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Here’s a new 4-page 50th anniversary FIDDLER ON THE ROOF retrospective featuring a roadshow playdate chronology and historian Q&A. The Park’s year-long run is mentioned in the piece.
In the late 1970s I was in high school and took my girlfriend to the Park as often as possible. I was the laughingstock of John Oliver Secondary School and knew that if I took my chick up Fraser Street on Friday or Saturday night the bullies who hung out at the Fraser Theatre would notice me and my date and, after we left the theatre, would shove both of us into oncoming Fraser Street traffic. My way of avoiding such ugliness was to take her into a neighborhood where nobody knew me. On dozens of occasions we did dinner, a movie and a milkshake on Main, Cambie, Oak, Granville, Burrard, Arbutus or Dunbar Street. Nobody ever hassled us in those ‘hoods.
This is the first theatre to opening as an Odeon on August 4th, 1941 in Canada, which is why Cineplex grabbed it in 2013. Grand opening ad and article:
Park Theatre opening Sat, Aug 2, 1941 – 10 · The Vancouver Sun (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) · Newspapers.com
This was the Vancouver location for the Hateful Eight 70MM roadshow presentation.
The equipment was provided by Boston Light and Sound and consisted of a Cinemeccanica Victoria 8 projector, a Cinemeccanica 7004 Console Lamphouse, Christie AW3R platter and a DTS XD10 providing the sound.
The sale now appears to be official, as the Festival Cinemas website says that the Park is now part of Cineplex Entertainment.
I can almost guarantee you that they will no longer be programming art films there.
The sale to Cineplex sounded a bit odd to me as well. Cineplex is a big fish that builds stadium-seat megaplexes, why would they want to sink money into 2 outdated theatres that run art films?
My guess is they will run them for a short period of time and then close them, striking two more theatres off their list of competitors. The properties are in good locations ripe for retail/condo development.
Cineplex is also building a huge megaplex at the foot of Cambie street along the Canada Line Skytrain which is easily accessible to the surrounding neighbourhood of the Park theatre.
I guess we’ll see what develops.
If Cineplex has both the Park and the Fifth Avenue, then that doesn’t bode well for the future of either theatre. When Cineplex first owned the Park, it originally closed that theatre down in 1990 before Schein took it over and reopened it about a month later.
Leonard Schein and Tom Lightburn, owners of the Park and Festival Cinemas, have announced they have sold both theatres to Cineplex. The sale will be completed in March 2013.
The Park was the only location in Vancouver to be equipped for “ SENSURROUND ” in 1974 for EARTHQUAKE.
Was a 35mm 4track MAG presentation.
A 2005 view of the Park Theatre in Vanouver.
A 2005 view of the Park Theater in Vancouver can really be seen here.
The Park is a gorgeous theatre with a fabulous rich history behind it. As Jason states above, kudos to Leonard Schein for taking it over. It would be an incredible tragedy for the Park to go under, considering that we have very few classic cinemas left in Vancouver. We barely have any movie theatres AT ALL in the downtown core & the surrounding areas. Ridiculous when you consider that we’re a world class metropolis & the third largest city in Canada. Let’s hope that the Park continues on for many, many decades. When the Cambie line is finally built, the neighbourhood (which is attractive as they come) will hopefully get back to normal once again.
I for one am very thankful that Leonard Schein rebirthed his Vancouver art-house chain, Festival Cinemas, and took this cinema back under his wing. As with Alliance Atlantis' run from 1999 to 2005, the theatre plays mostly art house and independent, with the occasional high profile blockbuster (Spike Lee’s flick “The Inside Man” was a recent film that played there).
The theatre is easily accessible by the #15 Cambie bus
I visited the cinema in about 2001 to see “Mulholland Drive” and was quite impressed by the large single screen cinema, although I found the rows to be very narrow and the seats somewhat stiff$. The Park also played 70mm for several films back in the day.
It has now been fully restored with new seats (very comfortable and with more legroom, making its seat total around 500 instead of 640 before), a gorgeous new screen that is adaptable to play pre-widescreen era academy ratio (1.37:1) films as well as the current flat (1.85) and scope (2.40) formats, and Dolby Digital.
My only gripe is that it is really expensive to see a movie here; $12.00 for an adult evening ticket, unless you have a $12 annual membership and that knocks the price down a few dollars. I am also cuirious as to how the theatre will stay afloat through over the next year or so of construction of Translink’s “Canada Line” skytrain which may make access to the cinema more difficult.
Still, The Park is a really nice theatre that is worth supporting; not just for the fact that these single screeners are struggling in Vancouver, but it has a more refreshing atmosphere than the overloud megaplexes out in suburbia.