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.
The Collin Creek Mall-area had one of Interstate’s most remarkably unsuccessful theaters in the Cameo Theater opening 1971 and closing four times under the same circuit. But with Collin Creek Mall totally open and traffic heating up, General Cinema Corporation (GCC) felt the time was right to open a multiplex there. GCC leased a 22,702-square-foot retail building at the Collin Creek Village which across the street from the mall through Plano Parkway and down a curved road about a quarter mile curiously called Accent Drive. The theater was obscured from the highway southbound by a large Venture Department Store and northbound by highway elements. And even as you drove cautiously down Accent Drive, the theater was hidden by the nature of the curved road. The tidy six-screener was modeled after its prototype, the remodeled General Cinema Town East V that had a grand re-re-opening in December 1984.
Even despite the visibility issues and lack of close proximity to the mall’s name it carried, the theater did well enough though not fulfilling its 15-year lease. An attraction sign at the corner of Plano and Accent Dr. was the only indication that a theatre was a quarter of mile away. It opened with the Roger Corman film “Munchies,” the previous year’s “Hoosiers,” low budgeted “Opposing Force,” the exploitation “Stepfather,” “The Chipmunk Adventure,” and “Ernest Goes to Camp.” Despite the austere line-up, the theater did perform for the circuit but competition came along US-75 with the discount first-run Cinemark McKinney 14-plex in May of 1994 to the north and to the south from Loews Keystone 16 in 1997. Late in 1997, the writing was on the wall as Cinemark announced its new Legacy megaplex even closer to the North on 75. General Cinema’s multiplexes were getting demolished by new multiplexes all over the country.
In a period of just a few months, GCC would shutter its Prestonwood Village IV, Carrollton VI, Redbird V-X, Northpark III&IV, Town East VI, Town East V, White Settlement, and Collin Creek. Shortly thereafter, some people who transferred to GCC’s Northpark I&II were shut out almost immediately thereafter as the chain’s flagship for the area also shuttered. Much like the closures at Furneaux Creek, Richardson 6, Galleria, and Central Park, the Collin Creek did not get new product for the final month languishing with film bombs such as “54” and “The Avengers” and long-in-the-tooth product such as “The Parent Trap” and “Armegeddon.” The theater on the dead end road came in rather quietly and left without any patronage. A true dead end. The only way to tell that the theater was now closed was the lack of features on the attraction board which stayed for years until the property became home to two non-profit churches.
The UA Town East was a direct competition attack to the established General Cinema Corporation’s (GCC) Town East cinema. The UA Town East had a successful run from 1982 to 1998 though eventually failing to make it through its entire 20-year lease.
In the 1980s, Mesquite, Texas was growing fast with two malls — The Big Town Mall (1959) and the superior Town East Mall (1971). GCC controlled this zone cinemas adjacent to each mall. But the traffic was at Town East and shopping centers sprouted all around that mall in the 1970s and 1980s. Opening theatreless in 1974 was one example: the Driftwood Shopping Center. United Artists circuit felt the time was right to challenge in the Town East zone and announced a theatre to open within the Driftwood the summer of 1982. Unlike the twin-screen GCC Town East I&II, the UA would have the big number six for its competitive UA Town East 6 six-plex.
From an architectural point of view, this UA was not a destination theater like the UA 150 well before it or the UA Plaza after it. John Panzeca, vice president of United Artists Realty in charge of the company’s Plaza project said of theaters such as Town East, UA’s Bowen, 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 the non-descript theater delivered for the circuit going online at just the right time opening June 4, 1982 sharing opening days with the also architecturally-benign AMC Irving 6 and GCC Redbird Mall V-X. The UA Town East’s opening films were “Star Trek II,” “Bambi, “Hanky Panky” on two screens and “On Golden Pond.” The UA Town East would compete with GCC’s Town East for big summer clearances getting in addition to “Star Trek II”, “Blade Runner,” and “Firefox,” the biggest prize of that summer.
The UA Town East 6 would be known as the multiplex built by “E.T.” as the 1982 smash hit almost paid for the theater single-handedly playing for 42 weeks. Concession sales were brisk. That same rookie year, “Officer and a Gentlemen” was another huge hit for the UA 6-plex. The theater’s salad days happened right out of the batter’s box and over the next two years. But choppier waters were just ahead.
The GCC Town East figured out how to divide its twin-screener into a five screener re-opening on December 17, 1982. A poor effort that UA would counter delivering a curved screen experience with a 70mm THX house in 1984 to present the megahit ”Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” A blow to GCC which had boasted superior presentation. As the Towne Crossing Center was being built opening across the highway from the Town East theaters soon delivering the AMC Towne Crossing Center 8, GCC closed the Town East 5 again to deliver a much better thought-out design for that cinema launching December 7, 1984 with one “A” screen to compete with the UA Town East’s 70mm THX house. And like a game of Risk, GCC decided to blunt the AMC Towne Crossing with six more screens adjacent to the newly-built flop-to-be Outlet Mall at Town East opening May 22, 1985. When the Towne Crossing 8 opened that same year, there were four multiplexes in the same vicinity – two “Town East 6’s”, one “Town East 5” and AMC’s 8-screener. Confusing but effective as Mesquite suddenly became the area’s third-most populous movie destination behind only the Central Zone and Prestonwood in which the three circuits would also battle it out.
The Mesquite battle was being won by GCC with its 11-screen to 8 for AMC to 6 for UA advantage. AMC’s Towne Crossing would descent to dollar house status but traffic would decrease throughout the 1990s to all four aging multiplexes. The game would end with some arrows and then the big bomb. A Cinemark 15-screener in Garland just to the North opened in 1992. UA would build a beautiful 9/10 screen destination theater near there opening in 1996. And AMC put all its Risk armies into a 30-screen megaplex just two exits to the south of the Town East opening in 1998. That megaplex spelled the end for all of the Town East multiplexes. Starplex Cinemas would add a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney. A megaplex also came to Rockwall. And Terrell got a multiplex. But it was the AMC Mesquite 30 that doomed the circuit’s own Towne Crossing 8. Then the GCC Town East 6 went down as classes started up in August 1998. Then the UA Town East 6 on Halloween of 1998. Then the Town East 5 just a week prior to Christmas of 1998. Oddly enough, the Big Town Cinema would hang on the longest closing a month later as a Cinemark discount house.
The UA Town East 6 could have some solace as its property closure had company as all over the city in the Fall of 1998 multiplexes were closing as megaplex mania had taken over. UA’s Prestonwood Creek and South 8 and GCC’s Prestonwood Town Center, Collin Creek, Carrollton, Northpark III&IV, Redbird I-IV, Irving IV-VII, Northpark I&II all closed in a tight time frame that fall. Also closing were the theaters which opened on the same day as the UA Town East, the Redbird V-X and AMC Irving 6. The UA Town East 6 building would be repurposed for retail that included a grocery store that had the features of the theater and then super-gutted for an Aldi store that was still there in the mid-2010s. But the theater’s run with E.T. and its 70mm presentations including “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” will always be a fond memory for Mesquite moviegoers.
North Hills Mall was designed by RTKL Architects and opened September 12, 1979 to challenge the nearby Northeast mall that had opened eight years earlier. In 1984, General Cinema – which had a 20-year old theater just up the road at the aging Richland Plaza, announced a replacement for that property. It would launch a seven screen theater inside of North Hills Mall and one up the United Artists Northeast 6 which had opened in the Northeast Mall seven years earlier. Opening May 22, 1985, the theater added a missing dimension from the North Hills shopping complex. The 25,000 square foot theater had an easy access entrance and exit for late night Sunday shows when the rest of the mall was closed.
The North Hills VII allowed town meetings, had summer film camps for the kids, and tried to be a part of the North Richland Hills community. Early in 1990, a Cinemark Movies 8 moved in virtually across the street. But the newer North Hills Mall seemed to have the older one on the run especially in 1997 as the United Artists departed the aging Northeast Mall . But the Northeast folks used some trickery and a great business model to drastically revamp that property that year and wrested away some key tenants from North Hills.
At that same time, nationally, the General Cinema multiplex model was getting destroyed by the megaplex builders including Cinemark and AMC. Despite the fact that nobody was building a megaplex in the Mid-Cities, the North Hills Mall was heading downhill quickly and General Cinema wanted to get off of the sinking ship. GCC was able to exercise a performance clause to escape its lease from the North Hills property as the foot traffic and occupancy rate was below promised levels. The theater pulled out September 17, 1998 and the gates closed down over the property leaving both malls theater-less. This turned out to be a great move as North Hills quickly found itself in greyfield status and with ownership changes that couldn’t stem the tide.
Potentially great news for the North Hills occurred when new owners took over and announced that Cinemark would opens an 18-screen theater for North Hills Mall to open in 2001 with an ice skating rink. After delays – and another mall ownership change — it became a 16-screen concept to open in 2003/4. That also didn’t materialize. And in October of 2004, the mall shut down with the General Cinema property having not aged an iota from the time it had been closed in 1998. A month later, it was Northeast mall that got its modern megaplex with the opening of the Rave Northeast Mall 18.
The final owner of the North Hills Mall in 2005 staged a pre-demolition sale and vultures picked apart the entire mall decimating the former GCC North Hills VII theater along with every other store. The mall owner would walk away from the property without demolishing it. The city of North Richland Hills had no choice but to call the property what it was – a safety hazard with exposed everything inside following the unusual pre-demo sale – and finally ordered the mall and cinema’s demolition in early 2007.
Ridgmar Mall opened April 7, 1976. Its movie theater was in the adjacent Ridgmar Town Square built in 1986 and was opened by General Cinema on New Year’s Day 1987. Like many malls after its 20th anniversary, retailers bolted after their 20 year leases were up and the mall was leaning toward greyfield status, a term akin to a dead mall. So a major revamp was undertaken in 1997 to bring in new retailers and concepts. Among them was to be AMC Ridgmar which announced in 1998 that it planned to build a 20-screen megaplex theater. That 4,000-seat megaplex would have had stadium seating and a lobby overlooking an expanded food court under a vaulted glass skylight and was to be the centerpiece of the next 20-years of the mall. The $70 million stunning redevelopment took place without AMC as the mall had a Grand Reopening on July 21, 2000.
On October 5, 2000, all of the remaining General Cinema Tarrant County theaters were closed including the Ridgmar Town Square along with the Arlington Park Square and Bedford’s Central Park. AMC still planned to open a downsized 16-screen theater in the Fall of 2002 at Ridgmar. In the interim, the external movie theater was reopened by the Great Texas Movie Co. circuit rebranding the theater as the Ridgmar Movie Tavern. And Ridgmar finally got its theater but in the form of a Rave Theater.
The Rave Motion Pictures Ridgmar 13 opened at 12:01 a.m. December 17, 2003 with three sold out showings of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” The $15 million, 62,000 square foot theater would be the first megaplex in western Fort Worth with stadium seating, digital sound, wall-to-wall screens and 4 feet of room between rows. At opening, the auditoriums were sized from 120 seats to 420 seats each. The Design International architected theater opened as DFW’s second Rave theater behind only its first theater, the Hickory Creek. The theater’s digital capabilities allowed for expanded Real-D 3D showings, live Metropolitan Opera simulcasts and a variety of Fathom concert events.
The Cinemark chain acquired all of Rave’s properties in 2013 and divested the flagship Rave in Hickory Creek which was forced to rebrand under Carmike operation. But the North East and Ridgmar Mall properties would continue under the Cinemark-owned Rave nameplate. It would add the Cinemark-branded Xtreme “Big Screen Experience”. Under new mall owner GK Development, the mall was in the throes of a mild descent that would be hastened by a new shopping mall opening in 2017 to the south which would take away the anchor Nieman Marcus so it was unclear how bright a future the popular theater would have heading into the 2020s.
The North East Mall by Simon Properties was built theater-less opening in 1971. When the competing North Hills Mall was announced just a mile away to open in 1979, expansion in 1977/8 brought two new anchors and the mall’s first theater with the United Artists Northeast 6. The UA theater fulfilled its 20-year lease and moved on in 1997. The loss of UA actually propelled the mall into another expansion which would bring Nordstrom’s and Saks Fifth Avenue into the mall and encourage Foley’s to vacate North Hills for Northeast. In 1998, General Cinemas closed its North Hills interior cinema leaving an opportunity for a new-build megaplex.
Cinemark was first to the table announcing an 18-screen theater for North Hills Mall to open in 2001 and after delays it became a 16-screen concept to open in 2003/4 – part of an elaborate plan to resuscitate the moribund North Hills property that never took place. When Montgomery Ward’s chain was liquidated in 2001, an opportunity arose at North East Mall. A failed May Co. plan to build a Lord & Taylor in the Ward’s store would finally lead to a new theater for the area. Rave Motion Pictures of Dallas would open its third DFW facility as part of a 100,000 addition that included three restaurants.
The Design International architected theater opened November 10, 2004 just as the entire North East Mall had finally closed. The Rave Northeast Mall 18 theater’s screens were elaborately placed in three levels allowing for an eye-popping lobby and concession area. Auditorium sizes ranged at opening from 114 to 456 seats, seating with four feet of legroom between rows and 18-inch risers in stadium seating rows. The theater featured digital projection and 3D, including the first ever NCAA men’s final basketball telecast in 3D as well as live opera simulcasts and related Fathom live events. Rave also launched its digital signage network pioneering it at the Rave North East in 2011. Its 66 locations would take advantage of the signage as Rave had climbed to the fifth position in the movie exhibition U.S. by the end of 2012. The design flair of the North East fit the high tech circuit’s business model perfectly and gave the mid-cities its first modern-era theater.
The Cinemark chain acquired all of Rave’s properties in 2013 and divested the flagship Rave in Hickory Creek which was forced to rebrand under Carmike operation. But the North East and Ridgmar Mall properties would continue under the Cinemark-owned Rave nameplate. It would add the Cinemark-branded Xtreme “Big Screen Experience” as well as Indian Bollywood offerings. With the closest competition being a 25-year old sub-run discount house operated by Cinemark a mile away, the Rave North East 18 was well-positioned in the mid-2010s for a bright future.
The Towne Crossing Center was a $200 million project to the northwest of the uber-successful Town East Mall in Mesquite. The Town East Mall had launched in 1971 and by the early 1980s had decimated the nearby Big Town Mall to the point that strip shopping centers were being built all around Town East to take advantage of the traffic. People were driving from Rockwall, east Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Forney and even Terrell to shop and watch movies. General Cinema Corporation (GCC) had launched in Mesquite with its Big Town Cinema in February of 1964. Ten years later it opened at Town East Mall with a twin screener. The other circuits wanted in on the action. The UA Town East 6 was the first competition for GCC launching in June of 1982 and found GCC hastily changing its twin-screen Town East to a five-screen operation.
But AMC’s announcement of an 8-screen theater just across the highway to open in 1985 unnerved GCC. AMC and UA had already undermined GCC in the second-most commercial zone in Dallas by building superior theaters to its GCC Prestonwood Village IV with AMC’s Prestonwood 5 and UA’s Prestonwood Creek 5. Getting less than two years from its five-screen conversion, GCC temporarily closed the Town East V and gutted it to make an improved theater. It also built another six-screen theater to be launched just yards away from its original location. It would not submit to AMC’s announcement.
The AMC Towne Crossing 8 finally opened November 1, 1985. Because clearances were tight, AMC decided to reach an underserved audience. It launched a Bijou screen, a specialty screen showing art films and documentaries. It also opted for midnight shows which proved to be an early hit. Much as in Prestonwood, confusion for consumers was palpable as the four Mesquite theaters were close in both name and proximity.
And eventually General Cinema had weathered the storm as the AMC Towne Crossing would be relegated to sub-run discount status. Gone were midnight screenings and Bijou / Gourmet theater offerings. AMC had other ideas. It would drop the bomb on what had become DFW’s third-most popular commercial theatrical zone with Mesquite only behind the Central Zone and Prestonwood.
AMC delivered the knockout blow to the zone with its 30-screen megaplex, the AMC Mesquite 30, announced in September of 1996 and approved by the Mesquite City Council in December of that year. When it opened in March of 1998 just two exits from the Town East zone, that would end the AMC Towne Crossing. With the Starplex Cinemas adding a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney and a Cinemark megaplex in Rockwall along with a Terrell multiplex, people weren’t driving to the dated Town East theaters any longer. General Cinema closed its Town East VI as classes went back into session in 1998 and almost as suddenly the Town East V left prior to Christmas of 1998. Within six months, the third busiest zone in DFW went from four theaters to zero.
The AMC Towne Crossing 8 would get one more chance to remain a cinema treasure. Star Cinemas had re-opened the GCC Town East V in December of 2001 but the theater struggled with code enforcement related to restrooms closing at the end of June of 2002. That theatre operation scooted across the highway renaming the AMC Towne Crossing and operating very quietly as the Lone Star Cinema until 2003 and drawing very few customers. Upon closing, the store would be repurposed for retail ventures including a waterbed store. Although the Towne Crossing is largely forgotten, its footprint into the Town East zone and eventual gravitation to the nearby Mesquite 30 changed Mesquite movie-going forever.
General Cinema Corporation (GCC) had a good run in Mesquite, TX. It had opened its Big Town Cinema in February of 1964. Ten years later, it was operating just outside of Mesquite’s second mall and the area’s first twin-level mall, Homart’s Town East Mall. Opening at Town East Mall Cinema I & II on June 28, 1974 were its grand opening features of The Parallax View and The Incredible Journey with Old Yeller. GCC would downgrade its Big Town theater to discount status. For Homart and GCC, being paired would be nothing new being just outside of its first mall, the Seminary South in Fort Worth, outside of the Six Flags Mall in Arlington, and opening inside of Homart’s Valley View in 1975 and in the 1980s outside of Homart’s Parks at Arlington mall. But unlike those locations – and ten years after its launch at Town East – competition would get cut-throat.
Strip shopping centers began surrounding the uber–popular Town East Mall which began to decimate nearby Big Town Mall’s customer base. Traffic was packed around the Town East area and retail complexes popped up overnight. United Artists would open its own Town East 6 on June 4, 1982 in the nearby Driftwood Shopping Center. The UA would compete with GCC for big summer clearances getting “Star Trek II”, “E.T.” and “Blade Runner” at the outset. Disheartening, true, but the GCC Town East would rabbit-punch back closing briefly to re-open on December 17, 1982. It transitioned from a two-screen to a five-screen operation to have more room for clearances. However, the hastily-created design left much to be desired and, worse yet, the Towne Crossing Center was being built opening across the highway from Town East. It would be delivering the AMC Towne Crossing Center 8.
GCC wouldn’t give up. In 1984, the Town East was closed and totally gutted becoming a prototype for many almost identical theaters which General Cinema would create or retrofit. Its main auditorium was arguably in the circuit’s top five screens in presentation short of General Cinema Northpark I. The five-screen prototype theater would launch December 7, 1984 and just yards away it was constructing another six-screen theater launching May 22, 1985. That theater actually launched three months ahead of the AMC eight-screen Town Crossing. Much as in Prestonwood, confusion for consumers was palpable as the theaters were close in both name and proximity. That said, business was brisk with business from Rockwall, east Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Forney and even Terrell.
What changed in Mesquite? Garland would get two megaplexes to the North but 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 salad days for movie exhibition were going quickly. General Cinema closed its Town East Six as classes went back into session in 1998 and almost as suddenly the Town East V left prior to Christmas of 1998. Somehow, the Big Town Cinema out-survived both of GCC’s Town East properties closing as a Cinemark discount cinema in January of 1999. But who could have foreseen the third busiest zone in DFW going from four theaters to zero so quickly?
Star Cinemas would change that re-opening the GCC Town East V in December of 2001 with Kate & Leopold and Blackhawk Down among the features. But the theater struggled with code enforcement related to restrooms closing at the end of June of 2002. That theatre operation would hop across the highway to the former AMC Towne Crossing operating quietly as the Lone Star Cinema until 2003. For the GCC Town East, it would just sit vacant year after year hoping to get demolished. Its attraction board along 635 is still in use though now featuring the name of Town East anchor stores.
The General Cinema Central Park 8 in Bedford was announced in December of 1983 as part of the 120-acre project architected by RTKL Associates launching in 1985. The Central Park was part of General Cinema’s expansion during the multiplex era to 71 DFW screens including the sequel to the Town East Cinema, the Arlington Park Square 8, the Collin Creek Mall 6, and two Fort Worth multiplexes with the Ridgmar and White Settlement.
The Central Park 8 seemed to be cruising toward completing its 20-year lease sitting between General Cinema’s North Hills cinema and the chain’s Irving Mall which had expanded to 14 screens in 1998. Closer competition came from the UA Bedford 10. But the chain and its multiplex business model was being decimated by more aggressive megaplex developers.
On October 5th, 2000, General Cinema shut theaters all over the country taking down all of Tarrant Country’s remaining locations including the Arlington Park Square, Fort Worth’s Ridgmar Square, and Bedford’s Central Park. In 2001, Entertainment Filmworks had a business plan to convert dead General Cinema locations into food/entertainment theaters. The company did a conversion while operating the EFW Cinema Central Park 8 opening and then closing in about a year’s time after a reported $400,000 refurbishing.
After more than a year of vacancy, Great Texas Movie Co. of Granbury became the location’s third operator in November of 2003. Great Texas had previously re-opened the former General Cinema Ridgmar as Ridmar Movie Tavern — and the former AMC Green Oaks as Movie Tavern Green Oaks. The circuit put in around $1 million to provide an improved lobby and spacious seating along with beer, wine and kitchen with expanded menu options reopening as Movie Tavern at Central Park. The chain would expand to 20 locations by the mid-2010s which included the Central Park location which had already surpassed 30 years of service as a multiplex.
Located in the former Sakowitz Village was the AMC Village on the Parkway architected by Dallas' firm Good Fulton & Farrell Architects (also known as GFF Architects). Though it was AMC’s 11th location in DFW, it had the distinction of being an original luxury concept theater coined as “The Marketplace” offering a different checkout process for concessions among its amenities. The theater contained a MacGuffins Bar & Lounge as well as the area’s first Prime theater with reverberating recliners. Moreover, the AMC VOTP represented was a throw-back to the days when Prestonwood was the second most popular zone for moviegoing in the Dallas-area back in the 1980s and into the 1990s and a throw-down when AMC battled for clearances against rivals for the exclusive right to show the best films.
True, Prestonwood Mall was long gone and Sakowitz was a distant memory when AMC got involved with the 30-acre, $40 million Village on the Parkway shopping center project. And though General Cinema and United Artists were long removed from the zone, a new kid on the block raised questions about the AMC location. The $20-million Look Cinema had opened in March 2013 in the former UA Prestonwood then Studio Movie Grill location less than a mile from Village on the Parkway. At that time, AMC was outside the territory about three miles away at the ailing Valley View Mall operating its low-cost, first-run 16-screener. No battles or clearance issues with the Look.
But AMC decided to hedge its bets by announcing its AMC Village on the Parkway, a 12-screen then reduced to 9-screen luxury cinema just yards away from the former General Cinema Prestonwood / Montfort theater. To Look, it seemed to be a way of siphoning product away from its screens. And it did almost from the outset, including the 2014 installment of the Hunger Games franchise that was booked at AMC and not Look. More bad news for the Look was when box office sensation American Sniper not only didn’t go to the Look but reaped additional revenue by playing in the more expensive Prime screen at the VOTP. It was the Dallas' area’s second such recent feud when Alamo Drafthouse came to Dallas and Studio Movie Grill moved in just an exit away to a former Loews theater. As of the mid-2010s, it was unclear which of the two high-end luxury theaters would come out on top or if a floated legal battle would take shape between the indy and corporate giant.
The John R. Thompson architected Belaire Theater project was just the second new build Interstate Theatre for the Dallas-Fort Worth area since the 1949 construction of Dallas’ Forest Theatre. The proposed 1,000 seat theater was arranged continental style with long rows instead of multiple aisles. The rows would become wider by the time it was built ending up with 860 total seats all on the main floor. The theater was housed in the Hurst-Belaire Shopping Center which, itself, opened theater-less on June 2, 1963 in Hurst, Texas by George P. Macatee III and Robert S. Folsom. The $350,000 theater had 70mm projection with 6-channel stereo sound and parking for mre than 700 cars. It was part of Interstate Theaters $4 million expansion with nine theaters including the Westwood in Richardson, South Fort Worth’s Wedgewood, the Westwood in Abilene, and Pasadena’s Parkview Theater.
The theater opened April 8, 1966 with “That Darn Cat” a day after an invitation-only screening of “The Trouble with Angels” the night before. It was quadplexed into four auditoriums and became a sub-run dollar house. The theater appears to have had a 20-year lease honored followed by, perhaps, a 15-year lease where it closed as a decrepit, seedy independent dollar house in a shopping center that had neither been updated nor had many retailers remaining when the theater closed in December of 2001. When the doors locked for the last time, few seemed to take notice. However, at least one group would come calling.
Empty for four years and with a very uncertain future, the Artisan Center operating in the faded North Hills Mall was looking for a new home. In 2005, the live theater group took over the Belaire knocking down the wall between screens three and four while using houses one and two for rehearsals and workshops. In 2013, the Artisan signed a five-year extension which would take the theater past its 50th anniversary. The theater was the Hurst-Belaire shopping center’s beacon of light salvaging the theater and proved that this location could provide decades of entertainment for the area.
The AMC Northwood Hills 4 was the second DFW AMC theater opening in 1970 with a 10-year lease at Coit and Spring Valley Road serving as a first-run theater and a renewed second 10-year lease in which the theater was a second-run dollar house. The theater was excised from the shopping center after shuttering at the start of 1990 and would be replaced by a new retail store.
In 1950, Richardson had doubled its growth post-War but to just 1,300 residents. The suburb just to the north of Dallas grew throughout the 1960s hitting 50,000 residents by year’s end. Interstate Circuit had predicted this trend building its single screen Westwood at Spring Valley and Coit Road opening in 1966. Downtown’s Ritz Theater would go out of business shortly thereafter and Interstate was sitting pretty. But upstart to the DFW area, AMC theaters had other exhibition ideas. Opening its hugely successful Northtown 6 about eight miles away in 1969, the AMC theater showed six first-run films while the suburban Westwood could show just one.
The theater chain decided to build three additional multiplexes in Dallas. The Northwood Hills neighborhood of Dallas would get one theater. N-H was created in the late 1950s bounded by Belt Line Rd. on the north, Coit Rd. on the east, Alpha Rd. on the south and White Rock Creek on the west. The Northwood Hills 4 would open in the backyard of the Westwood signing a lease at Coit and Spring Valley in January of 1970 less than a mile away from the Interstate operation.
Interstate countered by hastily creating a second auditorium called the Promenade reflecting the new name of the shopping center that housed the theater and the later name of that operation. Meanwhile, AMC had its four-screener NH-4 ready to go July 1, 1970 with its first auditorium of 350 seats opening with “Paint Your Wagon,” its second screen of 250 seats with “Which Way to the Front?” the third screen and fourth screen with 225 seats with “The Reivers” and “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.” For AMC, it was game on as the company expanded in the next calendar year to the Forum 303 Mall 6 in Grand Prairie, the Preston Center 2 in Dallas, and two disastrous entries into Oak Cliff with the short-lived Golden Triangle 4 and the open-then-closed Western Park Village Center 4.
The cinematic money was heading to the west about four miles away as in May of 1980 the AMC Prestonwood launched near the General Cinema Prestonwood and near the forthcoming UA Prestonwood that same year. With the Prestonwood area becoming Dallas' second most lucrative theatrical zone, in July of 1980, a pricing policy change downgraded the Northwood Hills 4 to a dollar house. The same occurred at the rival Promenade Twin. For the next ten years, the property would age quickly showing second-run fare as AMC grinded out what it could from the aging property. The theater closed as its 20 years of lease cycles concluded on January 1, 1990.
The final films were “Dead Poets’ Society,” “Parenthood,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “Immediate Family,” and “Let It Ride.” Interstate now under Plitt operation decided to up the ante for the dollar house fare and turned its Westwood into a six-screen facility in 1984 that lasted for its final ten-year stretch. AMC’s plan proved to be the winner, however, vanquishing the Interstate/Plitt Circuit as Plitt just wasn’t aggressive in the multiplex era. Well played AMC and the Northwood Hills 4 played a role in moving Dallas to the multiplex era.
The fast-growing AMC Theater chain wanted to follow up its game- changing AMC Northtown 6 and its follow-up AMC Northwood Hills 4 on the border of Richardson with another 42 screens with 10,000 seats in Dallas during the 1971 calendar year. On the periphery of Dallas’ Preston Hollow neighborhood, the Preston Center 2 Theatres was built by contractor Koonce & Davis and in support of AMC’s architects was Albert R. Smith, a Dallas architect. The side-by-side theaters each had their own attraction sign and entrance at the Preston Center East Shopping Center but shared every other theater amenity. The 10,200 square foot theater had two 450 seat houses for a capacity of 900 patrons (technically 446x2 892 total). Opening on Nov. 10, 1971, the theater had a first-run film in “Joe Hill” and a return presentation of “Carnal Knowledge” which had played at the General Cinema NorthPark I & II. The opening was sandwiched between AMC’s grand opening of the AMC Golden Triangle 4 in Oak Cliff in July and the Nov. 17th opening of the ill-fated AMC Western Park 4.
The theater featured first-run fare and great midnight shows. While the theater had many up days, the challenges for the twin screener were that it was land-locked, had parking challenges at key points in the day, and with only two screens was AMC’s only area theater with fewer than four screens. By 1980, AMC demoted the theater to sub-run $1 movies for all shows, a mis-match for the Preston Hollow neighborhood. Meanwhile, a sleepy twin-screen theater in Farmers Branch, TX rebranded itself from dollar house to art theater. Brought in to the Showcase was Bob Berney who had managed AMC’s Greenway 3 which, itself, had transitioned from mainstream to successful art film policy. Suddenly, AMC had a notion! The Preston theater was rebranded as the Park Cities Theatres 2 and closed after a handful of dollar screenings to renovate the theater to show art films full-time. AMC hoped that the Greenway’s success in Houston would translate within Dallas.
Starting in Nov. 17, 1980, the Park Cities 2 showed “Practice Makes Perfect,” a French film, and “Rude Boy,” a British film. The concessions now included coffee and imported candy along with much classier carpeting. For 14 months, the Park Cities 2 tried every language of film imaginable but the losses mounted to a six figure loss. Dallas proved to be a much worse draw for art films than Houston in the early 1980s. At the end of the 10-year lease cycle and a short-term re-up, the writing was on the wall and AMC would pull up anchor. On the Park Cities 2 marquee the last night of its operation, the message read on the left attraction board for screen one, “Dallas One,” and on the right attraction board for screen two, “Art Zero.” In a classy move, the theater manager addressed the audiences for the last showings of the Park Cities 2 in January of 1982 telling audiences to go to the Inwood Theater, which would switch to an all-art film policy. Meanwhile, the Showcase Cinema in Farmers Branch would move to full-time X and XXX films. And the Park Cities 2 closed up shop and would be repurposed for other retail purposes. AMC would get back to the general area moving to the AMC Highland Park Village in the Park Cities five years later.
The Perkowitz + Ruth architected AMC Parks 18 megaplex was nothing short of a bombshell in South Arlington opening November 6, 2002. The 18-plex occupied 72,800 square feet with 3,360 seats—auditoriums ranging in size from 100 to 350 seats. Its announcement in 1999 as a 4,000 seat 24-screen multiplex had employees at aging Arlington multiplexes updating their resumes as the theater’s footprint would impact the AMC Green Oaks, General Cinema Arlington Square 8, UA Bowen. AMC Festival (former Forum), Loews Lincoln Square, and Loews Cinemas 20 & 287, all of which would close due in part to the Parks. The megaplex was in and multiplex was under pressure.
Sears’ Homart Development had the 112-acre site for the Arlington Park Mall since the 1970s but didn’t announce its anchors or plans until January of 1983 with a 1986 targeted opening date as the Arlington Park Mall. The initial theater was external to the mall as General Cinema theater opened December 12, 1986 with its Arlington Park Square 8 much as was the case with Homart’s Seminary Square and Town East malls which featured neighboring external General Cinema properties. But unlike those projects, the Arlington Park Mall was stalled, slowed by inability to get tenants signed on quickly and wasn’t even approved by the Arlington City Council until 1987 and finally opened in 1988.
In 1995, Homart was purchased by General Growth Properties and that same year the AMC Grand in Dallas revolutionized film going for the area. General Growth announced an AMC property inside its new Stonebriar Mall in Frisco, TX in 1998 and had already plotted how to renovate its aging Parks property even prior. In talks for several years with AMC regarding the Parks the announcement came in 1999 and the AMC Parks opened in 2002. There was no questioning the impact of the project to south Arlington. General Cinema would bail out of its neighboring Arlington Park Square 8 and all other Tarrant County locations on October 5th, 2000 even prior to the AMC Parks facelift finishing, leaving the mall area theaterless until 2002.
With aged malls dying all over the DFW area, the AMC Parks megaplex project was the heart of a big-risk 1.6 million-square-foot addition. An expanded food court, an ice skating rink, the replacement of the ghost town Sears-owned Great Indoors anchor, Arlington police stations, carousel and – possibly most important, two new adjacent parking deck structures remade the mall. The $70 million renovation plan with tax rebate incentives paid out big.
The AMC Parks 18’s overall theme was called Film City and upped AMC’s more benign Stonebriar 24 in Frisco with more design flair. Hallway walls had murals of movie stars and the terrazzo floor design had famous movie quotes, “Here’s lookin' at you, kid!” and “We’re not in Kansas anymore” among them. A similar design would be used at Dallas’ Valley View 16 and elsewhere across the country. Ample legroom, with each row 18 inches higher than the one in front along with AMC’s loveseats were there. The theater went all in for Sony Dynamic Digital Sound is in all auditoriums. The theater had a single large concession stand opting for vending machines near each auditorium rather than the multiple concession areas tried in other area AMC multiplexes.
Its November 6, 2002 opening would spell the end for the area’s multiplexes associated with the major chains. The Loews properties would be bulldozed. The General Cinema property became home to the Arlington school district. The former AMC Green Oaks and Festival became Movie Tavern and dollar house locations and the UA Bowen – which, itself, was ticketed for a megaplex makeover that never happened – became a storage facility. While competition came in the form of a nearby Studio Movie Grill in January of 2007, the AMC Parks continued to thrive into the 2010s.
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.
The Collin Creek Mall-area had one of Interstate’s most remarkably unsuccessful theaters in the Cameo Theater opening 1971 and closing four times under the same circuit. But with Collin Creek Mall totally open and traffic heating up, General Cinema Corporation (GCC) felt the time was right to open a multiplex there. GCC leased a 22,702-square-foot retail building at the Collin Creek Village which across the street from the mall through Plano Parkway and down a curved road about a quarter mile curiously called Accent Drive. The theater was obscured from the highway southbound by a large Venture Department Store and northbound by highway elements. And even as you drove cautiously down Accent Drive, the theater was hidden by the nature of the curved road. The tidy six-screener was modeled after its prototype, the remodeled General Cinema Town East V that had a grand re-re-opening in December 1984.
Even despite the visibility issues and lack of close proximity to the mall’s name it carried, the theater did well enough though not fulfilling its 15-year lease. An attraction sign at the corner of Plano and Accent Dr. was the only indication that a theatre was a quarter of mile away. It opened with the Roger Corman film “Munchies,” the previous year’s “Hoosiers,” low budgeted “Opposing Force,” the exploitation “Stepfather,” “The Chipmunk Adventure,” and “Ernest Goes to Camp.” Despite the austere line-up, the theater did perform for the circuit but competition came along US-75 with the discount first-run Cinemark McKinney 14-plex in May of 1994 to the north and to the south from Loews Keystone 16 in 1997. Late in 1997, the writing was on the wall as Cinemark announced its new Legacy megaplex even closer to the North on 75. General Cinema’s multiplexes were getting demolished by new multiplexes all over the country.
In a period of just a few months, GCC would shutter its Prestonwood Village IV, Carrollton VI, Redbird V-X, Northpark III&IV, Town East VI, Town East V, White Settlement, and Collin Creek. Shortly thereafter, some people who transferred to GCC’s Northpark I&II were shut out almost immediately thereafter as the chain’s flagship for the area also shuttered. Much like the closures at Furneaux Creek, Richardson 6, Galleria, and Central Park, the Collin Creek did not get new product for the final month languishing with film bombs such as “54” and “The Avengers” and long-in-the-tooth product such as “The Parent Trap” and “Armegeddon.” The theater on the dead end road came in rather quietly and left without any patronage. A true dead end. The only way to tell that the theater was now closed was the lack of features on the attraction board which stayed for years until the property became home to two non-profit churches.
The UA Town East was a direct competition attack to the established General Cinema Corporation’s (GCC) Town East cinema. The UA Town East had a successful run from 1982 to 1998 though eventually failing to make it through its entire 20-year lease.
In the 1980s, Mesquite, Texas was growing fast with two malls — The Big Town Mall (1959) and the superior Town East Mall (1971). GCC controlled this zone cinemas adjacent to each mall. But the traffic was at Town East and shopping centers sprouted all around that mall in the 1970s and 1980s. Opening theatreless in 1974 was one example: the Driftwood Shopping Center. United Artists circuit felt the time was right to challenge in the Town East zone and announced a theatre to open within the Driftwood the summer of 1982. Unlike the twin-screen GCC Town East I&II, the UA would have the big number six for its competitive UA Town East 6 six-plex.
From an architectural point of view, this UA was not a destination theater like the UA 150 well before it or the UA Plaza after it. John Panzeca, vice president of United Artists Realty in charge of the company’s Plaza project said of theaters such as Town East, UA’s Bowen, 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 the non-descript theater delivered for the circuit going online at just the right time opening June 4, 1982 sharing opening days with the also architecturally-benign AMC Irving 6 and GCC Redbird Mall V-X. The UA Town East’s opening films were “Star Trek II,” “Bambi, “Hanky Panky” on two screens and “On Golden Pond.” The UA Town East would compete with GCC’s Town East for big summer clearances getting in addition to “Star Trek II”, “Blade Runner,” and “Firefox,” the biggest prize of that summer.
The UA Town East 6 would be known as the multiplex built by “E.T.” as the 1982 smash hit almost paid for the theater single-handedly playing for 42 weeks. Concession sales were brisk. That same rookie year, “Officer and a Gentlemen” was another huge hit for the UA 6-plex. The theater’s salad days happened right out of the batter’s box and over the next two years. But choppier waters were just ahead.
The GCC Town East figured out how to divide its twin-screener into a five screener re-opening on December 17, 1982. A poor effort that UA would counter delivering a curved screen experience with a 70mm THX house in 1984 to present the megahit ”Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” A blow to GCC which had boasted superior presentation. As the Towne Crossing Center was being built opening across the highway from the Town East theaters soon delivering the AMC Towne Crossing Center 8, GCC closed the Town East 5 again to deliver a much better thought-out design for that cinema launching December 7, 1984 with one “A” screen to compete with the UA Town East’s 70mm THX house. And like a game of Risk, GCC decided to blunt the AMC Towne Crossing with six more screens adjacent to the newly-built flop-to-be Outlet Mall at Town East opening May 22, 1985. When the Towne Crossing 8 opened that same year, there were four multiplexes in the same vicinity – two “Town East 6’s”, one “Town East 5” and AMC’s 8-screener. Confusing but effective as Mesquite suddenly became the area’s third-most populous movie destination behind only the Central Zone and Prestonwood in which the three circuits would also battle it out.
The Mesquite battle was being won by GCC with its 11-screen to 8 for AMC to 6 for UA advantage. AMC’s Towne Crossing would descent to dollar house status but traffic would decrease throughout the 1990s to all four aging multiplexes. The game would end with some arrows and then the big bomb. A Cinemark 15-screener in Garland just to the North opened in 1992. UA would build a beautiful 9/10 screen destination theater near there opening in 1996. And AMC put all its Risk armies into a 30-screen megaplex just two exits to the south of the Town East opening in 1998. That megaplex spelled the end for all of the Town East multiplexes. Starplex Cinemas would add a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney. A megaplex also came to Rockwall. And Terrell got a multiplex. But it was the AMC Mesquite 30 that doomed the circuit’s own Towne Crossing 8. Then the GCC Town East 6 went down as classes started up in August 1998. Then the UA Town East 6 on Halloween of 1998. Then the Town East 5 just a week prior to Christmas of 1998. Oddly enough, the Big Town Cinema would hang on the longest closing a month later as a Cinemark discount house.
The UA Town East 6 could have some solace as its property closure had company as all over the city in the Fall of 1998 multiplexes were closing as megaplex mania had taken over. UA’s Prestonwood Creek and South 8 and GCC’s Prestonwood Town Center, Collin Creek, Carrollton, Northpark III&IV, Redbird I-IV, Irving IV-VII, Northpark I&II all closed in a tight time frame that fall. Also closing were the theaters which opened on the same day as the UA Town East, the Redbird V-X and AMC Irving 6. The UA Town East 6 building would be repurposed for retail that included a grocery store that had the features of the theater and then super-gutted for an Aldi store that was still there in the mid-2010s. But the theater’s run with E.T. and its 70mm presentations including “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” will always be a fond memory for Mesquite moviegoers.
North Hills Mall was designed by RTKL Architects and opened September 12, 1979 to challenge the nearby Northeast mall that had opened eight years earlier. In 1984, General Cinema – which had a 20-year old theater just up the road at the aging Richland Plaza, announced a replacement for that property. It would launch a seven screen theater inside of North Hills Mall and one up the United Artists Northeast 6 which had opened in the Northeast Mall seven years earlier. Opening May 22, 1985, the theater added a missing dimension from the North Hills shopping complex. The 25,000 square foot theater had an easy access entrance and exit for late night Sunday shows when the rest of the mall was closed.
The North Hills VII allowed town meetings, had summer film camps for the kids, and tried to be a part of the North Richland Hills community. Early in 1990, a Cinemark Movies 8 moved in virtually across the street. But the newer North Hills Mall seemed to have the older one on the run especially in 1997 as the United Artists departed the aging Northeast Mall . But the Northeast folks used some trickery and a great business model to drastically revamp that property that year and wrested away some key tenants from North Hills.
At that same time, nationally, the General Cinema multiplex model was getting destroyed by the megaplex builders including Cinemark and AMC. Despite the fact that nobody was building a megaplex in the Mid-Cities, the North Hills Mall was heading downhill quickly and General Cinema wanted to get off of the sinking ship. GCC was able to exercise a performance clause to escape its lease from the North Hills property as the foot traffic and occupancy rate was below promised levels. The theater pulled out September 17, 1998 and the gates closed down over the property leaving both malls theater-less. This turned out to be a great move as North Hills quickly found itself in greyfield status and with ownership changes that couldn’t stem the tide.
Potentially great news for the North Hills occurred when new owners took over and announced that Cinemark would opens an 18-screen theater for North Hills Mall to open in 2001 with an ice skating rink. After delays – and another mall ownership change — it became a 16-screen concept to open in 2003/4. That also didn’t materialize. And in October of 2004, the mall shut down with the General Cinema property having not aged an iota from the time it had been closed in 1998. A month later, it was Northeast mall that got its modern megaplex with the opening of the Rave Northeast Mall 18.
The final owner of the North Hills Mall in 2005 staged a pre-demolition sale and vultures picked apart the entire mall decimating the former GCC North Hills VII theater along with every other store. The mall owner would walk away from the property without demolishing it. The city of North Richland Hills had no choice but to call the property what it was – a safety hazard with exposed everything inside following the unusual pre-demo sale – and finally ordered the mall and cinema’s demolition in early 2007.
Ridgmar Mall opened April 7, 1976. Its movie theater was in the adjacent Ridgmar Town Square built in 1986 and was opened by General Cinema on New Year’s Day 1987. Like many malls after its 20th anniversary, retailers bolted after their 20 year leases were up and the mall was leaning toward greyfield status, a term akin to a dead mall. So a major revamp was undertaken in 1997 to bring in new retailers and concepts. Among them was to be AMC Ridgmar which announced in 1998 that it planned to build a 20-screen megaplex theater. That 4,000-seat megaplex would have had stadium seating and a lobby overlooking an expanded food court under a vaulted glass skylight and was to be the centerpiece of the next 20-years of the mall. The $70 million stunning redevelopment took place without AMC as the mall had a Grand Reopening on July 21, 2000.
On October 5, 2000, all of the remaining General Cinema Tarrant County theaters were closed including the Ridgmar Town Square along with the Arlington Park Square and Bedford’s Central Park. AMC still planned to open a downsized 16-screen theater in the Fall of 2002 at Ridgmar. In the interim, the external movie theater was reopened by the Great Texas Movie Co. circuit rebranding the theater as the Ridgmar Movie Tavern. And Ridgmar finally got its theater but in the form of a Rave Theater.
The Rave Motion Pictures Ridgmar 13 opened at 12:01 a.m. December 17, 2003 with three sold out showings of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” The $15 million, 62,000 square foot theater would be the first megaplex in western Fort Worth with stadium seating, digital sound, wall-to-wall screens and 4 feet of room between rows. At opening, the auditoriums were sized from 120 seats to 420 seats each. The Design International architected theater opened as DFW’s second Rave theater behind only its first theater, the Hickory Creek. The theater’s digital capabilities allowed for expanded Real-D 3D showings, live Metropolitan Opera simulcasts and a variety of Fathom concert events.
The Cinemark chain acquired all of Rave’s properties in 2013 and divested the flagship Rave in Hickory Creek which was forced to rebrand under Carmike operation. But the North East and Ridgmar Mall properties would continue under the Cinemark-owned Rave nameplate. It would add the Cinemark-branded Xtreme “Big Screen Experience”. Under new mall owner GK Development, the mall was in the throes of a mild descent that would be hastened by a new shopping mall opening in 2017 to the south which would take away the anchor Nieman Marcus so it was unclear how bright a future the popular theater would have heading into the 2020s.
The North East Mall by Simon Properties was built theater-less opening in 1971. When the competing North Hills Mall was announced just a mile away to open in 1979, expansion in 1977/8 brought two new anchors and the mall’s first theater with the United Artists Northeast 6. The UA theater fulfilled its 20-year lease and moved on in 1997. The loss of UA actually propelled the mall into another expansion which would bring Nordstrom’s and Saks Fifth Avenue into the mall and encourage Foley’s to vacate North Hills for Northeast. In 1998, General Cinemas closed its North Hills interior cinema leaving an opportunity for a new-build megaplex.
Cinemark was first to the table announcing an 18-screen theater for North Hills Mall to open in 2001 and after delays it became a 16-screen concept to open in 2003/4 – part of an elaborate plan to resuscitate the moribund North Hills property that never took place. When Montgomery Ward’s chain was liquidated in 2001, an opportunity arose at North East Mall. A failed May Co. plan to build a Lord & Taylor in the Ward’s store would finally lead to a new theater for the area. Rave Motion Pictures of Dallas would open its third DFW facility as part of a 100,000 addition that included three restaurants.
The Design International architected theater opened November 10, 2004 just as the entire North East Mall had finally closed. The Rave Northeast Mall 18 theater’s screens were elaborately placed in three levels allowing for an eye-popping lobby and concession area. Auditorium sizes ranged at opening from 114 to 456 seats, seating with four feet of legroom between rows and 18-inch risers in stadium seating rows. The theater featured digital projection and 3D, including the first ever NCAA men’s final basketball telecast in 3D as well as live opera simulcasts and related Fathom live events. Rave also launched its digital signage network pioneering it at the Rave North East in 2011. Its 66 locations would take advantage of the signage as Rave had climbed to the fifth position in the movie exhibition U.S. by the end of 2012. The design flair of the North East fit the high tech circuit’s business model perfectly and gave the mid-cities its first modern-era theater.
The Cinemark chain acquired all of Rave’s properties in 2013 and divested the flagship Rave in Hickory Creek which was forced to rebrand under Carmike operation. But the North East and Ridgmar Mall properties would continue under the Cinemark-owned Rave nameplate. It would add the Cinemark-branded Xtreme “Big Screen Experience” as well as Indian Bollywood offerings. With the closest competition being a 25-year old sub-run discount house operated by Cinemark a mile away, the Rave North East 18 was well-positioned in the mid-2010s for a bright future.
The Towne Crossing Center was a $200 million project to the northwest of the uber-successful Town East Mall in Mesquite. The Town East Mall had launched in 1971 and by the early 1980s had decimated the nearby Big Town Mall to the point that strip shopping centers were being built all around Town East to take advantage of the traffic. People were driving from Rockwall, east Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Forney and even Terrell to shop and watch movies. General Cinema Corporation (GCC) had launched in Mesquite with its Big Town Cinema in February of 1964. Ten years later it opened at Town East Mall with a twin screener. The other circuits wanted in on the action. The UA Town East 6 was the first competition for GCC launching in June of 1982 and found GCC hastily changing its twin-screen Town East to a five-screen operation.
But AMC’s announcement of an 8-screen theater just across the highway to open in 1985 unnerved GCC. AMC and UA had already undermined GCC in the second-most commercial zone in Dallas by building superior theaters to its GCC Prestonwood Village IV with AMC’s Prestonwood 5 and UA’s Prestonwood Creek 5. Getting less than two years from its five-screen conversion, GCC temporarily closed the Town East V and gutted it to make an improved theater. It also built another six-screen theater to be launched just yards away from its original location. It would not submit to AMC’s announcement.
The AMC Towne Crossing 8 finally opened November 1, 1985. Because clearances were tight, AMC decided to reach an underserved audience. It launched a Bijou screen, a specialty screen showing art films and documentaries. It also opted for midnight shows which proved to be an early hit. Much as in Prestonwood, confusion for consumers was palpable as the four Mesquite theaters were close in both name and proximity.
And eventually General Cinema had weathered the storm as the AMC Towne Crossing would be relegated to sub-run discount status. Gone were midnight screenings and Bijou / Gourmet theater offerings. AMC had other ideas. It would drop the bomb on what had become DFW’s third-most popular commercial theatrical zone with Mesquite only behind the Central Zone and Prestonwood.
AMC delivered the knockout blow to the zone with its 30-screen megaplex, the AMC Mesquite 30, announced in September of 1996 and approved by the Mesquite City Council in December of that year. When it opened in March of 1998 just two exits from the Town East zone, that would end the AMC Towne Crossing. With the Starplex Cinemas adding a 10-screen discount house in Mesquite and a 12-screen theater in Forney and a Cinemark megaplex in Rockwall along with a Terrell multiplex, people weren’t driving to the dated Town East theaters any longer. General Cinema closed its Town East VI as classes went back into session in 1998 and almost as suddenly the Town East V left prior to Christmas of 1998. Within six months, the third busiest zone in DFW went from four theaters to zero.
The AMC Towne Crossing 8 would get one more chance to remain a cinema treasure. Star Cinemas had re-opened the GCC Town East V in December of 2001 but the theater struggled with code enforcement related to restrooms closing at the end of June of 2002. That theatre operation scooted across the highway renaming the AMC Towne Crossing and operating very quietly as the Lone Star Cinema until 2003 and drawing very few customers. Upon closing, the store would be repurposed for retail ventures including a waterbed store. Although the Towne Crossing is largely forgotten, its footprint into the Town East zone and eventual gravitation to the nearby Mesquite 30 changed Mesquite movie-going forever.
General Cinema Corporation (GCC) had a good run in Mesquite, TX. It had opened its Big Town Cinema in February of 1964. Ten years later, it was operating just outside of Mesquite’s second mall and the area’s first twin-level mall, Homart’s Town East Mall. Opening at Town East Mall Cinema I & II on June 28, 1974 were its grand opening features of The Parallax View and The Incredible Journey with Old Yeller. GCC would downgrade its Big Town theater to discount status. For Homart and GCC, being paired would be nothing new being just outside of its first mall, the Seminary South in Fort Worth, outside of the Six Flags Mall in Arlington, and opening inside of Homart’s Valley View in 1975 and in the 1980s outside of Homart’s Parks at Arlington mall. But unlike those locations – and ten years after its launch at Town East – competition would get cut-throat.
Strip shopping centers began surrounding the uber–popular Town East Mall which began to decimate nearby Big Town Mall’s customer base. Traffic was packed around the Town East area and retail complexes popped up overnight. United Artists would open its own Town East 6 on June 4, 1982 in the nearby Driftwood Shopping Center. The UA would compete with GCC for big summer clearances getting “Star Trek II”, “E.T.” and “Blade Runner” at the outset. Disheartening, true, but the GCC Town East would rabbit-punch back closing briefly to re-open on December 17, 1982. It transitioned from a two-screen to a five-screen operation to have more room for clearances. However, the hastily-created design left much to be desired and, worse yet, the Towne Crossing Center was being built opening across the highway from Town East. It would be delivering the AMC Towne Crossing Center 8.
GCC wouldn’t give up. In 1984, the Town East was closed and totally gutted becoming a prototype for many almost identical theaters which General Cinema would create or retrofit. Its main auditorium was arguably in the circuit’s top five screens in presentation short of General Cinema Northpark I. The five-screen prototype theater would launch December 7, 1984 and just yards away it was constructing another six-screen theater launching May 22, 1985. That theater actually launched three months ahead of the AMC eight-screen Town Crossing. Much as in Prestonwood, confusion for consumers was palpable as the theaters were close in both name and proximity. That said, business was brisk with business from Rockwall, east Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Forney and even Terrell.
What changed in Mesquite? Garland would get two megaplexes to the North but 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 salad days for movie exhibition were going quickly. General Cinema closed its Town East Six as classes went back into session in 1998 and almost as suddenly the Town East V left prior to Christmas of 1998. Somehow, the Big Town Cinema out-survived both of GCC’s Town East properties closing as a Cinemark discount cinema in January of 1999. But who could have foreseen the third busiest zone in DFW going from four theaters to zero so quickly?
Star Cinemas would change that re-opening the GCC Town East V in December of 2001 with Kate & Leopold and Blackhawk Down among the features. But the theater struggled with code enforcement related to restrooms closing at the end of June of 2002. That theatre operation would hop across the highway to the former AMC Towne Crossing operating quietly as the Lone Star Cinema until 2003. For the GCC Town East, it would just sit vacant year after year hoping to get demolished. Its attraction board along 635 is still in use though now featuring the name of Town East anchor stores.
The General Cinema Central Park 8 in Bedford was announced in December of 1983 as part of the 120-acre project architected by RTKL Associates launching in 1985. The Central Park was part of General Cinema’s expansion during the multiplex era to 71 DFW screens including the sequel to the Town East Cinema, the Arlington Park Square 8, the Collin Creek Mall 6, and two Fort Worth multiplexes with the Ridgmar and White Settlement.
The Central Park 8 seemed to be cruising toward completing its 20-year lease sitting between General Cinema’s North Hills cinema and the chain’s Irving Mall which had expanded to 14 screens in 1998. Closer competition came from the UA Bedford 10. But the chain and its multiplex business model was being decimated by more aggressive megaplex developers.
On October 5th, 2000, General Cinema shut theaters all over the country taking down all of Tarrant Country’s remaining locations including the Arlington Park Square, Fort Worth’s Ridgmar Square, and Bedford’s Central Park. In 2001, Entertainment Filmworks had a business plan to convert dead General Cinema locations into food/entertainment theaters. The company did a conversion while operating the EFW Cinema Central Park 8 opening and then closing in about a year’s time after a reported $400,000 refurbishing.
After more than a year of vacancy, Great Texas Movie Co. of Granbury became the location’s third operator in November of 2003. Great Texas had previously re-opened the former General Cinema Ridgmar as Ridmar Movie Tavern — and the former AMC Green Oaks as Movie Tavern Green Oaks. The circuit put in around $1 million to provide an improved lobby and spacious seating along with beer, wine and kitchen with expanded menu options reopening as Movie Tavern at Central Park. The chain would expand to 20 locations by the mid-2010s which included the Central Park location which had already surpassed 30 years of service as a multiplex.
Located in the former Sakowitz Village was the AMC Village on the Parkway architected by Dallas' firm Good Fulton & Farrell Architects (also known as GFF Architects). Though it was AMC’s 11th location in DFW, it had the distinction of being an original luxury concept theater coined as “The Marketplace” offering a different checkout process for concessions among its amenities. The theater contained a MacGuffins Bar & Lounge as well as the area’s first Prime theater with reverberating recliners. Moreover, the AMC VOTP represented was a throw-back to the days when Prestonwood was the second most popular zone for moviegoing in the Dallas-area back in the 1980s and into the 1990s and a throw-down when AMC battled for clearances against rivals for the exclusive right to show the best films.
True, Prestonwood Mall was long gone and Sakowitz was a distant memory when AMC got involved with the 30-acre, $40 million Village on the Parkway shopping center project. And though General Cinema and United Artists were long removed from the zone, a new kid on the block raised questions about the AMC location. The $20-million Look Cinema had opened in March 2013 in the former UA Prestonwood then Studio Movie Grill location less than a mile from Village on the Parkway. At that time, AMC was outside the territory about three miles away at the ailing Valley View Mall operating its low-cost, first-run 16-screener. No battles or clearance issues with the Look.
But AMC decided to hedge its bets by announcing its AMC Village on the Parkway, a 12-screen then reduced to 9-screen luxury cinema just yards away from the former General Cinema Prestonwood / Montfort theater. To Look, it seemed to be a way of siphoning product away from its screens. And it did almost from the outset, including the 2014 installment of the Hunger Games franchise that was booked at AMC and not Look. More bad news for the Look was when box office sensation American Sniper not only didn’t go to the Look but reaped additional revenue by playing in the more expensive Prime screen at the VOTP. It was the Dallas' area’s second such recent feud when Alamo Drafthouse came to Dallas and Studio Movie Grill moved in just an exit away to a former Loews theater. As of the mid-2010s, it was unclear which of the two high-end luxury theaters would come out on top or if a floated legal battle would take shape between the indy and corporate giant.
The John R. Thompson architected Belaire Theater project was just the second new build Interstate Theatre for the Dallas-Fort Worth area since the 1949 construction of Dallas’ Forest Theatre. The proposed 1,000 seat theater was arranged continental style with long rows instead of multiple aisles. The rows would become wider by the time it was built ending up with 860 total seats all on the main floor. The theater was housed in the Hurst-Belaire Shopping Center which, itself, opened theater-less on June 2, 1963 in Hurst, Texas by George P. Macatee III and Robert S. Folsom. The $350,000 theater had 70mm projection with 6-channel stereo sound and parking for mre than 700 cars. It was part of Interstate Theaters $4 million expansion with nine theaters including the Westwood in Richardson, South Fort Worth’s Wedgewood, the Westwood in Abilene, and Pasadena’s Parkview Theater.
The theater opened April 8, 1966 with “That Darn Cat” a day after an invitation-only screening of “The Trouble with Angels” the night before. It was quadplexed into four auditoriums and became a sub-run dollar house. The theater appears to have had a 20-year lease honored followed by, perhaps, a 15-year lease where it closed as a decrepit, seedy independent dollar house in a shopping center that had neither been updated nor had many retailers remaining when the theater closed in December of 2001. When the doors locked for the last time, few seemed to take notice. However, at least one group would come calling.
Empty for four years and with a very uncertain future, the Artisan Center operating in the faded North Hills Mall was looking for a new home. In 2005, the live theater group took over the Belaire knocking down the wall between screens three and four while using houses one and two for rehearsals and workshops. In 2013, the Artisan signed a five-year extension which would take the theater past its 50th anniversary. The theater was the Hurst-Belaire shopping center’s beacon of light salvaging the theater and proved that this location could provide decades of entertainment for the area.
The AMC Northwood Hills 4 was the second DFW AMC theater opening in 1970 with a 10-year lease at Coit and Spring Valley Road serving as a first-run theater and a renewed second 10-year lease in which the theater was a second-run dollar house. The theater was excised from the shopping center after shuttering at the start of 1990 and would be replaced by a new retail store.
In 1950, Richardson had doubled its growth post-War but to just 1,300 residents. The suburb just to the north of Dallas grew throughout the 1960s hitting 50,000 residents by year’s end. Interstate Circuit had predicted this trend building its single screen Westwood at Spring Valley and Coit Road opening in 1966. Downtown’s Ritz Theater would go out of business shortly thereafter and Interstate was sitting pretty. But upstart to the DFW area, AMC theaters had other exhibition ideas. Opening its hugely successful Northtown 6 about eight miles away in 1969, the AMC theater showed six first-run films while the suburban Westwood could show just one.
The theater chain decided to build three additional multiplexes in Dallas. The Northwood Hills neighborhood of Dallas would get one theater. N-H was created in the late 1950s bounded by Belt Line Rd. on the north, Coit Rd. on the east, Alpha Rd. on the south and White Rock Creek on the west. The Northwood Hills 4 would open in the backyard of the Westwood signing a lease at Coit and Spring Valley in January of 1970 less than a mile away from the Interstate operation.
Interstate countered by hastily creating a second auditorium called the Promenade reflecting the new name of the shopping center that housed the theater and the later name of that operation. Meanwhile, AMC had its four-screener NH-4 ready to go July 1, 1970 with its first auditorium of 350 seats opening with “Paint Your Wagon,” its second screen of 250 seats with “Which Way to the Front?” the third screen and fourth screen with 225 seats with “The Reivers” and “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.” For AMC, it was game on as the company expanded in the next calendar year to the Forum 303 Mall 6 in Grand Prairie, the Preston Center 2 in Dallas, and two disastrous entries into Oak Cliff with the short-lived Golden Triangle 4 and the open-then-closed Western Park Village Center 4.
The cinematic money was heading to the west about four miles away as in May of 1980 the AMC Prestonwood launched near the General Cinema Prestonwood and near the forthcoming UA Prestonwood that same year. With the Prestonwood area becoming Dallas' second most lucrative theatrical zone, in July of 1980, a pricing policy change downgraded the Northwood Hills 4 to a dollar house. The same occurred at the rival Promenade Twin. For the next ten years, the property would age quickly showing second-run fare as AMC grinded out what it could from the aging property. The theater closed as its 20 years of lease cycles concluded on January 1, 1990.
The final films were “Dead Poets’ Society,” “Parenthood,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “Immediate Family,” and “Let It Ride.” Interstate now under Plitt operation decided to up the ante for the dollar house fare and turned its Westwood into a six-screen facility in 1984 that lasted for its final ten-year stretch. AMC’s plan proved to be the winner, however, vanquishing the Interstate/Plitt Circuit as Plitt just wasn’t aggressive in the multiplex era. Well played AMC and the Northwood Hills 4 played a role in moving Dallas to the multiplex era.
The fast-growing AMC Theater chain wanted to follow up its game- changing AMC Northtown 6 and its follow-up AMC Northwood Hills 4 on the border of Richardson with another 42 screens with 10,000 seats in Dallas during the 1971 calendar year. On the periphery of Dallas’ Preston Hollow neighborhood, the Preston Center 2 Theatres was built by contractor Koonce & Davis and in support of AMC’s architects was Albert R. Smith, a Dallas architect. The side-by-side theaters each had their own attraction sign and entrance at the Preston Center East Shopping Center but shared every other theater amenity. The 10,200 square foot theater had two 450 seat houses for a capacity of 900 patrons (technically 446x2 892 total). Opening on Nov. 10, 1971, the theater had a first-run film in “Joe Hill” and a return presentation of “Carnal Knowledge” which had played at the General Cinema NorthPark I & II. The opening was sandwiched between AMC’s grand opening of the AMC Golden Triangle 4 in Oak Cliff in July and the Nov. 17th opening of the ill-fated AMC Western Park 4.
The theater featured first-run fare and great midnight shows. While the theater had many up days, the challenges for the twin screener were that it was land-locked, had parking challenges at key points in the day, and with only two screens was AMC’s only area theater with fewer than four screens. By 1980, AMC demoted the theater to sub-run $1 movies for all shows, a mis-match for the Preston Hollow neighborhood. Meanwhile, a sleepy twin-screen theater in Farmers Branch, TX rebranded itself from dollar house to art theater. Brought in to the Showcase was Bob Berney who had managed AMC’s Greenway 3 which, itself, had transitioned from mainstream to successful art film policy. Suddenly, AMC had a notion! The Preston theater was rebranded as the Park Cities Theatres 2 and closed after a handful of dollar screenings to renovate the theater to show art films full-time. AMC hoped that the Greenway’s success in Houston would translate within Dallas.
Starting in Nov. 17, 1980, the Park Cities 2 showed “Practice Makes Perfect,” a French film, and “Rude Boy,” a British film. The concessions now included coffee and imported candy along with much classier carpeting. For 14 months, the Park Cities 2 tried every language of film imaginable but the losses mounted to a six figure loss. Dallas proved to be a much worse draw for art films than Houston in the early 1980s. At the end of the 10-year lease cycle and a short-term re-up, the writing was on the wall and AMC would pull up anchor. On the Park Cities 2 marquee the last night of its operation, the message read on the left attraction board for screen one, “Dallas One,” and on the right attraction board for screen two, “Art Zero.” In a classy move, the theater manager addressed the audiences for the last showings of the Park Cities 2 in January of 1982 telling audiences to go to the Inwood Theater, which would switch to an all-art film policy. Meanwhile, the Showcase Cinema in Farmers Branch would move to full-time X and XXX films. And the Park Cities 2 closed up shop and would be repurposed for other retail purposes. AMC would get back to the general area moving to the AMC Highland Park Village in the Park Cities five years later.
Correction: Closing date of January 28, 1982
The Perkowitz + Ruth architected AMC Parks 18 megaplex was nothing short of a bombshell in South Arlington opening November 6, 2002. The 18-plex occupied 72,800 square feet with 3,360 seats—auditoriums ranging in size from 100 to 350 seats. Its announcement in 1999 as a 4,000 seat 24-screen multiplex had employees at aging Arlington multiplexes updating their resumes as the theater’s footprint would impact the AMC Green Oaks, General Cinema Arlington Square 8, UA Bowen. AMC Festival (former Forum), Loews Lincoln Square, and Loews Cinemas 20 & 287, all of which would close due in part to the Parks. The megaplex was in and multiplex was under pressure.
Sears’ Homart Development had the 112-acre site for the Arlington Park Mall since the 1970s but didn’t announce its anchors or plans until January of 1983 with a 1986 targeted opening date as the Arlington Park Mall. The initial theater was external to the mall as General Cinema theater opened December 12, 1986 with its Arlington Park Square 8 much as was the case with Homart’s Seminary Square and Town East malls which featured neighboring external General Cinema properties. But unlike those projects, the Arlington Park Mall was stalled, slowed by inability to get tenants signed on quickly and wasn’t even approved by the Arlington City Council until 1987 and finally opened in 1988.
In 1995, Homart was purchased by General Growth Properties and that same year the AMC Grand in Dallas revolutionized film going for the area. General Growth announced an AMC property inside its new Stonebriar Mall in Frisco, TX in 1998 and had already plotted how to renovate its aging Parks property even prior. In talks for several years with AMC regarding the Parks the announcement came in 1999 and the AMC Parks opened in 2002. There was no questioning the impact of the project to south Arlington. General Cinema would bail out of its neighboring Arlington Park Square 8 and all other Tarrant County locations on October 5th, 2000 even prior to the AMC Parks facelift finishing, leaving the mall area theaterless until 2002.
With aged malls dying all over the DFW area, the AMC Parks megaplex project was the heart of a big-risk 1.6 million-square-foot addition. An expanded food court, an ice skating rink, the replacement of the ghost town Sears-owned Great Indoors anchor, Arlington police stations, carousel and – possibly most important, two new adjacent parking deck structures remade the mall. The $70 million renovation plan with tax rebate incentives paid out big.
The AMC Parks 18’s overall theme was called Film City and upped AMC’s more benign Stonebriar 24 in Frisco with more design flair. Hallway walls had murals of movie stars and the terrazzo floor design had famous movie quotes, “Here’s lookin' at you, kid!” and “We’re not in Kansas anymore” among them. A similar design would be used at Dallas’ Valley View 16 and elsewhere across the country. Ample legroom, with each row 18 inches higher than the one in front along with AMC’s loveseats were there. The theater went all in for Sony Dynamic Digital Sound is in all auditoriums. The theater had a single large concession stand opting for vending machines near each auditorium rather than the multiple concession areas tried in other area AMC multiplexes.
Its November 6, 2002 opening would spell the end for the area’s multiplexes associated with the major chains. The Loews properties would be bulldozed. The General Cinema property became home to the Arlington school district. The former AMC Green Oaks and Festival became Movie Tavern and dollar house locations and the UA Bowen – which, itself, was ticketed for a megaplex makeover that never happened – became a storage facility. While competition came in the form of a nearby Studio Movie Grill in January of 2007, the AMC Parks continued to thrive into the 2010s.