Downtown Movie Complex Signs On River Park Square Tenant Inks Lease; Northtown Also Plans Complex

One of the nation’s largest cinema companies announced Wednesday it will open a 20-screen theater in downtown Spokane’s River Park Square.

American Multi-Cinema, Inc., based in Kansas City, Mo., signed a 20-year lease and will open the new movie house in the summer of 1999. The 3,700-seat theater will take up 84,000 square feet on the fourth and fifth floors of the shopping center.

“We believe this will be the largest theater in the nation for a city of this size,” said Dick Walsh, AMC’s senior vice president of west operations, during a news conference.

That didn’t scare Portland-based ACT III Theaters, which has a movie monopoly in this area with eight theaters in Spokane and two in Coeur d’Alene. The company responded to AMC’s news with plans of its own.

ACT III will release plans today for its own new multi-plex at NorthTown Mall.

The AMC cinema is the River Park Square project’s first anchor tenant to sign a lease. The proposed $100 million development includes a new Nordstrom store, an expanded parking garage, and other shops and restaurants.

AMC was attracted to the River Park Square project, Walsh said, because of the its regional draw and impressive tenant line-up. Though none of those tenants has been announced, Walsh said customers will be thrilled when they are.

“I hope people understand the tenant list is tremendous,” he said.

Though 20 movie screens may seem like a lot, Walsh said, they will allow the cinema to show blockbuster movies on as many as five screens.

AMC’s research of the Spokane area market shows the River Park Square project will have a regional draw, Walsh said. Within Spokane’s primary market area, he said, there are 1.6 million people.

“That’s very encouraging to us,” Walsh said.

The new movie theater boasts special amenities. Amphitheater-style auditoriums will suspend the movie-goer in front of wall-to-wall screens. Curved screens and acoustic equipment will provide improved sound and picture quality. And each row is 18 inches higher than the one in front of it. At ACT III’s Valley cinema, the elevation from row to row is seven inches.

AMC’s first 14 screens will open in summer 1999, with the remaining six opening afterwards. The River Park Square project is expected to open in mid-1999 as well.

ACT III will elaborate on plans for its new NorthTown multi-plex at a news conference today. That information will be included in NorthTown’s announcement of a planned $50 million expansion.

Blaum wouldn’t elaborate on the new NorthTown cinema, except to say that its’ size would “rival” the company’s new 12-plex in the Spokane Valley.

All of the new theaters raise an obvious question: will the market be over-saturated? In addition to downtown, NorthTown and the Valley, six screens recently were added in Post Falls, and a discount four-plex opened in Coeur d’Alene.

Blaum said time will tell which cinemas survive.

“We’re going to continue to do the job that we do,” he said. “As a corporate philosophy, we always welcome competition.”

, DataTimes