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Topic: Dallas: Loews Cityplace has closed
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John Robert
Member
Posts: 135
From: Addison, TX
Registered: Jan 2005
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posted January 07, 2008 02:51 PM
Dallas Morning News article
quote:
Final curtain falls on Cityplace cinema
Old East Dallas complex makes way for apartments, retail
12:00 AM CST on Monday, January 7, 2008
By STACI HUPP / The Dallas Morning News
shupp@dallasnews.com
Some people go to a day spa when they want to unwind. Rajesh Pidikiti's idea of an escape is catching a flick at the Cityplace cinema.
The Dallas man springs for a ticket and a Coke at the AMC Loews theater north of downtown about every other day.
"When I get frustrated in my work, I come here," said Mr. Pidikiti, a UT Southwestern Medical Center doctoral student, as he walked through the theater's doors Sunday afternoon.
It was his last trip. The curtain fell for the last time Sunday at the Cityplace cinema, one of the few multiscreen movie complexes in the central part of the city.
The theater is headed for the wrecking ball after nearly a dozen years at Haskell and Capitol avenues, just east of Central Expressway and the Uptown neighborhood. An apartment and retail complex is expected to take its place.
It's a sign of the times for the neighborhood, where cheap apartments have been bulldozed to make way for more upscale developments.
The theater's fate was posted on a small sign near the ticket counter Sunday. But the news largely was lost on customers like Mr. Pidikiti, who stood in line to buy a ticket to Enchanted for the second time.
His attachment to the Cityplace cinema is more logical than emotional. The theater is close to work and home, has a big movie menu and, at $6.75, offers a cheaper matinee than some competing theaters.
"If you go to NorthPark mall, it's more expensive," he said, referring to that shopping center's new multiscreen theater.
Yet the Cityplace theater, billed as the latest and greatest in high-tech theaters when it opened in 1996, has lost some of its luster.
Greg Yeager, 37, said he stopped going to Cityplace when the new theater at NorthPark Center recently opened. The Dallas man checked out showtimes for Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem at Cityplace Sunday afternoon with a friend but didn't buy a ticket.
Mr. Yeager said the AMC NorthPark 15 is worth the longer drive from his home in Lower Greenville because it's newer, cleaner and in a better neighborhood.
"You want to feel safe," he said.
Mr. Pidikiti said his favorite pastime won't change. Only the venue will.
"The theater is something you watch on the big screen, where you can feel the sound effects," he said. "It's better than watching at your house."
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Mark Richey
Member
Posts: 90
From: Fort Worth, TX
Registered: Feb 2003
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posted January 17, 2008 12:55 AM
I think Cutthroat Island was another option. I don't know if there was a third, but if there was, it probably also sucked for us to think that Dracula was the best option.
One interesting thing about the Cityplace and the Keystone is while the two theaters looked pretty much identical, both inside and out, the Keystone, which was built only about a year after the Cityplace, has stadium seating, while the Cityplace didn't. I think Cityplace might have been the last Dallas multiplex built without stadium seating, since the Grand and the Galaxy, which also opened around that time, are both stadium builds.
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