‘Where creation happens’: Cinema Quattro to bring new moviegoing experience to Liberty Lake

With four screening rooms, Liberty Lake’s soon-to-be Cinema Quattro will live up to its name. But developers have their sights set higher than your average theater.

Set to build on the North Liberty Lake River District, owner Jeremy Whittington envisions the building to be “a creation space.” Besides just hitting the movies, visitors will also be able to lounge in an attached restaurant and bar, attend a slam poetry reading or join a “drink and draw.”

The coronavirus pandemic “really wiped out the industry in ways that seemed like they were going to be irreparable, but 2025, for the first time, saw an upswing in moviegoers,” Whittington said. You can’t replicate the shared responses of fellow viewers from a home theater, “and I think people are hungry for that kind of communal gathering space.”

A roughly $5 million project, three of the cinemas will feature traditional, projector movie screens, while a fourth will have a full-sized LED screen, allowing for live events to take place in front of a digital backdrop.

Children’s birthday parties with lights on, business presentations, black box theater for more intimate performances, poetry readings and string quartets are among the possibilities, Whittington said.

“It also allows us to do some interesting things with 3D projection that you can’t do with a normal screen,” he said.

A normal LED backdrop has one drawback, though: Sound can’t travel from behind the screen to the audience, as it does in a traditional theater. In theaters that currently have LED screens, speakers are usually aimed at the screen so they can bounce back at the audience from the correct locations. Cinema Quattro will have a different approach.

“This new LED technology – that we’re the first in North America to have – it will actually allow us to have speakers behind the LED screens in certain areas of that screen that are transparent to sound,” he said. “So the audience will still get the experience of having actors speaking directly from the source, so it kind of aligns better in our brains.”

The possibility of hosting live events has been “a big draw” for Whittington, who has long been involved in the performing arts. He initially studied theater on a full-ride scholarship at Ohio University.

“But I dropped out in the middle of my junior year when I discovered the party life,” he said. “Got wrapped up in drugs and alcohol for a few decades, and that really tore my life apart. Then in 2009, I got clean and sober, went back to college to finish the one regret that I had, losing that scholarship.”

He majored in graphic design and rediscovered his love for theater while viewing a Lake City Playhouse performance of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” Within a month, Whittington was back in the production scene.

From 2020 -24, Whittington served as the artistic director for Spokane’s Stage Left Theater downtown and saw the nonprofit achieve national recognition through the American Association of Community Theatre.

“That was such a wonderful experience, and during that time I was approached by the developer who is developing the NoLL River District,” Whittington said.

The district has been in development for over a decade now, but construction has only begun in the past three or four years, said developer Jim Frank, head of Greenstone Corporation. Greenstone was the company behind Spokane’s Kendall Yards, and the NoLL River District is inspired by the same goal – creating unique, local-business-filled neighborhoods.

“The vision here is to create a strong sense of community, a place where people can gather, a place where people can meet each other, trying to build strong social fabric within the neighborhood,” Frank said. “And so I’ve always felt that entertainment facilities or something like a local cinema is part of a strong neighborhood.”

Greenstone Corporation owns the property they develop, but leases buildings back to local business owners who otherwise might have been unable to afford to start a business. Having worked with Whittington previously through Spokane Arts, Frank said he had the right background to bring a cinema to life.

“He’s the kind of person that we feel like we want to support and allow his business concepts to flourish in a neighborhood,” Frank said.

Whittington said he sees Liberty Lake as the perfect place for a new business, especially following the success of Kendall Yards. Living only 10 minutes away from the build site is an additional plus.

“But also, it’s just beautiful. Every time I drive out there – you know, I visit out there regularly to see how the construction is coming – and every time, I’m just looking around this space and seeing how we’re surrounded by mountains,” he said. “So the beauty of the space, the newness of the forward-thinking development was a real big draw for me.”

Whether visitors are on a first date or hanging out with friends in their pajamas, Whittington said he expects them to feel “both a sense of comfort and a sense of an elevated experience that’s a little different from most cinemas.”

“An artsy vibe is what we’re going for,” he said. “So you’re going to see a lot of art, you’re going to hear a lot of music, and you’re going to see a lot of films that speak to both cinema and art in general.”

Walls will be stocked with art from local creators, and Whittington expects to debut and showcase films from local filmmakers.

“I think people will be surprised with some of the partnerships with other film houses in our region that are going to happen,” he said. “And you know, this is just the initial phase. This is just my first idea.

“I’m really going to run with this in ways that I think are going to really show the community that we’re providing a space where creation happens.”

Timelines are still uncertain, but Whittington hopes that construction will be complete by fall 2026.

In New Zealand to tour cinema boutiques at the time of a phone call with the Spokesman-Review, Whittington said sometimes he still has to pinch himself to believe Cinema Quattro is becoming a reality.

“I’m beside myself. I feel so blessed. You know, I’m just a small-town boy from Sugar Grove, Ohio, and now I’m building an arts complex,” he said. “But then I come home and I see the little jar of dirt that I collected at the groundbreaking and I’m just – I feel really blessed.”