GTC Liberty Cinema 9

Joe Vogel on February 11, 2012 at 12:44 am

This house opened in 2001 with seven screens and 1,200 seats. I’ve been unable to discover if the additonal screens were new construction or resulted from splitting one or two of the original seven auditoriums. The Liberty Cinema was designed by the Alpharetta, Georgia, architectural firm Hiscutt & Associates, who have designed at least 14 cinema projects for Georgia Theatre Company II.

A July 7, 2001, Savannah Evening Post article about the opening of the Liberty 7 Cinemas said that Barron Godbee had encouraged the Georgia Theatre Company II to build the new multiplex after his company, Pal Amusements, had closed its twin-screen Brice Cinema, which had then been Hinesville’s only movie theater for over a decade, the previous year.

Earlier, Pal Amusements had operated two other theaters in Hinesville: the Pal Theatre, built on Main Street in 1940, and a drive-in built in the 1950s. The Brice Cinema had opened adjacent to the drive-in in the 1970s.

The original Georgia Theatre Company was sold to United Artists in 1986, but the Georgia Theatre Company II was founded in 1991 by members of the Stembler family, who had been connected with the original company. The Liberty 7 was the new company’s 23rd location, and brought their total number of screens to 201.

Incidental: The “Related Websites” link for this page isn’t working. Links to Georgia Theatre Company operations from some other CT pages also appear to be broken. The current web page for the Liberty Cinema 9 is here. The Georgia Theatre Company’s home page is here.