UA Northeast 6

The UA Cinema 6 opened as an interior mall movie theatre during the height of the multiplex era in Hurst, Texas' North East Mall. The Northeast Mall (originally one word) had opened in 1970/1 by Simon Properties theatre-less as a regional mall. Less than two miles away, a new mall, North Hills Mall, was announced by retailer Sanger-Harris in 1978 and was designed by RTKL Architects. This was a challenge for area mall dominance in the Mid-Cities area of Dallas-Fort Worth. Both venues strived to have interior theaters during their operational lifecycles.

The North East Mall (now as two words) aggressively began a major update in 1978 that almost doubled the eight year old facility’s square footage to combat the forthcoming North Hills Mall. The mall would add two anchors, a food court and the United Artists Cinema 6. The Cinema 6 was located just outside of the newly-created Ward’s anchor that had opened in August of 1978.  

The interior UA Cinema 6 was built by Herman De Hart (HDE) under plans drawn up by William Hidell, architect. The $1.1 million theater featured nearly 1,500 seats in the multiplex era of cinema exhibition and had a separate though adjoining box office. The UA Cinema 6 launched with three functioning screens on July 21, 1978 playing “The Swarm,” “Revenge of the Pink Panther” and “Star Wars.” The theater readied its fourth screen for showtimes on July 28, 1978 and its final two screens went online on August 4th. The UA Cinema 6 was an immediate hit.

In the Summer of 1984 - and perhaps its greatest overall year - the UA 6 saw consistent sell-outs as films such as “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “Karate Kid,” “Footloose,” “Romancing the Stone” and “Ghostbusters". General Cinema – which had a 20-year old twinned theater just up the road at the aging Richland Plaza - felt the economic impact of the UA Cinema 6. GCC announced a replacement for its Richland property to compete with the UA which - at its peak - was selling over 5,000 tickets on its busiest days. General Cinema would launch a seven-screen theater inside of North Hills Mall and one up the UA by a screen. Opening in May of 1985, the cinema had slightly superior parking and late-night show access.

Though largely overlooked, the United Artists Cinema 6’s success can’t be underestimated. Multiplex overbuild across the country continued and just five miles away from the UA Cinema 6 in nearby Bedford, Texas, General Cinema opened its Central Park 8 theater in 1985 and United Artists opened a 10-screen theater there in 1986. Even the aging Belaire Theater in Hurst moved from a twin to a four-screen discount operation in 1987. One subtraction in the area was the General Cinema Richland Plaza twin-screen venue that closed in 1986. But an 8-screen Rand Theatre opened in 1988 in a shopping strip across from the North Hills Mall more than making up for that loss. This left an astonishing 43 movie screens in operation within the tight Mid-Cities cinema exhibition zone. As a result of the influx of screens and likely confusion of advertising, the UA Cinema 6 was rebranded in marketing as the UA Northeast Mall 6 (and the UA Northeast 6) usually tagged with “inside the” - two-word titled - “North East Mall”.

The UA Northeast 6 had its first THX certified auditorium designated in April of 1992. The theater had its only major upgrade after a very brief pause in 1994, not long after its 15th anniversary, that would designate a second THX-certified screen that featured Dolby Stereo sound like its predecessor. With the 30-year anniversary of the North East Mall approaching, the Mall developed its coup de gras in its battle with North Hills Mall. It announced a $200 million expansion plan that would soon doom the North Hills Mall. The new plan moved the North East Mall from a regional to a super-regional venue with 168 stores and a new South wing that included many high-end retailers. United Artists decided to vacate the North East Mall at the expiry of its 20-year leasing period as aging multiplexes were under immense pressure from a new breed of megaplexes.

The UA Northeast 6 closed on January 17, 1999 with “Stepmom", “Patch Adams", “You’ve Got Mail", “The Prince of Egypt", “A Bug’s Life", and “Star Trek: Insurrection". It had the distinction of outlasting the General Cinema North Hills that had closed just one month earlier on December 17, 1998. The General Cinema Central Park in Bedford closed in October of 2000 (though would reopen under new operators later) and the Bellaire 4 discount operation closed in Hurst in December of 2001 as Mid-Cities cinemas were in full retreat. Cinemark announced an 18-screen megaplex in 2000 at the North Hills Mall as that facility tried to rebrand as a sports/entertainment destination for presumably its next 20-year cycle. That $110 million plan languished due to road work issues, 9-11-01, and a host of other reasons that led to Cinemark reducing the proposed and never-built plan to 16 screens. Instead, the North Hills Mall went into free fall grey-field or “dead mall” status resulting in its closure and demolition.

The North East Mall’s plan to quickly eradicate the vacant UA Northeast Cinema 6 spot was paused when retailer Lord & Taylor backed out of a leasing agreement to take over the Ward’s and Cinema space with an anchor. For movie fans, that turned out to be fortuitous, as Simon Property sought a megaplex to replace the former Ward’s anchor. After AMC turned down an offer to build there in 2002, Dallas-based Rave Motion Pictures signed onto a plan to build a megaplex and the mall would incorporate three restaurants in the update. That development occurred after the Hurst City Council approved of the plan in July of 2003. Rave opened on November 10, 2004 just as the vanquished North Hills Mall shuttered. Not long after, UA would abandon the Mid-Cities exhibition zone by closing its UA Bedford 10. Cinemark would ultimately get its Mid-Cities megaplex in acquiring Rave Motion Pictures in 2013. The former UA Cinema 6’s spot was erased in the process of the 2003/4 upgrade.

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