VIP Quincy 3

dallasmovietheaters on December 28, 2019 at 5:59 am

This theatre’s genesis began with 1968 architectural plans by Denver-based architect Richard L. Crowther and the opening of the Dickinson Circuit’s Town and Country Cinema, a free-standing twin-screen operation within Quincy’s 10-year old open air shopping center.

Dickinson’s operation existed within the Mall’s progeny as the outdoor American Legion Miracle Mile Town and Country Shopping Center. That center had opened theatre-less in 1958. By the 1960s, the center was referred to as the Town and Country Shopping Center, a miracle mile of shopping, and Dickinson built its twin-screen Town and Country Cinema within the outdoor complex.

The theatre’s present lease and iteration began as a two-theatre facility in November of 1978 under the Dickinson Theatre Circuit with a small rent and revenue sharing deal with mall developer Don M. Casto Organization of Columbus, Ohio. As the shopping center moved toward the terminus of its 20-year lease cycle, Casto had decided to build an entirely new mall nearby in Quincy. But plans changed and the Miracle Mile was reimagined as an enclosed mall with some tenants remaining in place and others moving or closing altogether. The renamed Quincy Mall launched on November 14, 1978 and Dickinson’s cinema was a key component of the center’s next forty years.

In June of 1979, Dickinson expanded its operation adding a third auditorium. At roughly the middle part of what appeared to be a 30-year lease in June 1994, Dickinson assigned the lease to the Kerasotes Theatres Circuit which continued the three-screen cinema’s operation and likely extending the lease by ten years as the initial lease was reaching expiry.

In June of 2010, the theatre became an AMC property when Kerasotes was bought out by the AMC Circuit operating as the AMC Quincy Mall Cinema 3. When the Carmike Circuit joined with AMC, AMC rebranded lower tier properties as AMC Classic. This operation became the AMC Classic Quincy Mall 3 in 2016 – a name it retained until closure in January of 2019 at the end of its lease with “Mary Poppins Returns,” “Spiderman: Spider-Verse” and “The Grinch” on January 7, 2019.

Hopes for a new operator appeared to be dim as the Mall went into a sudden downtrend losing all three of its original three anchors of JC Penney (closing in 2015), Bergner’s, and Sears (both closing in 2018). But operator VIP Cinemas took a chance on the venue equipping it with new seating and a lower pricing first run policy. It reopened September 14, 2019 as the 40 year old theatre continued into operation into the 2020s.

BWinking on January 6, 2015 at 9:32 pm

I went there in 1968, when it had 2 screens to choose from.

Paul Fortini on February 10, 2011 at 11:42 am

This should be updated to AMC Theatres.