Was built in 1994 to stave off AMC opening a theatre in the Edenvale area of San Jose. Century made efforts to build, but kept getting put off by members of the San Jose City Council, who wouldn’t change the zoning in the area to allow for a theatre. AMC expressed interest in building in the area, in a location the city preferred. Finally, in a middle finger to the City Council, they built the Capitol 16 on the Capitol 6 Drive-in property—already zoned for a theater.
It was the last Century Theatres completely designed by architect Vince Rainey. Subsequent theatres had a significantly different—and much nicer—interior design. Shortly after, they stopped using Rainey completely favoring the standard theater design now used my most major chains: U-shaped box building, stadium seating, etc.
The Great Mall location was built to shut down other competition in the area (AMC Milpitas). Century was willing to canibalize itself in order to 1) kill off competition and 2) make a great deal more money off a larger location with significantly more foot traffic.
Century could run Berryessa at a minimal profit, because they owned the land. Once the company was sold to Cinemark—with Century’s parent company Syufy Enterprises retaining ownership of the land—it was no longer in Cinemark’s best interest to keep the theatre running. I’m thinking they will probably turn it into a strip-mall, or keep it as is and take the loss off on their taxes.
I worked at the T&C for a few years in the 80’s. I remember both Top Gun and The Natural each played there for seven months. Do any theaters keep a movie for more than two weeks?
Anyway, it had a fantastic curved ‘ribbon screen’. Instead of a single curved piece of material, it was a series of hundreds of 1.5" ribbons that slightly overlapped in a curve. The depth in that screen was amazing. I saw Out of Africa there and went to see it again at another theater (why I would see that again, I can’t remember) and it looked so flat! However, if the A/C blew too hard, it caused the ribbons to shift and it looked as if there were scratches in the film.
T&C had these amazing Norelco projectors. The most forgiving and quiet projector ever. They ran reel-to-reel until Century Theatres took over. However, they left the second projector up—so we actually had a backup projector!
When AMC came in they put in this small screen that they hyped as “the largest Torus compound screen west of the Mississippi.” (Whatever that was.) It looked like crap. Across the street were two 40 x 80 screens and there answer was to put in a 20 x 40 in the same space? When Mann and Century showed films in Scope, the picture practically went ceiling to floor and wall to wall. Look at that picture at the top, it’s practically a quarter of what T&C had before AMC.
Also, AMC had no idea how to run a single-screen. It was total culture shock for them. It was a slow, sad decline for such a great theatre.
Was built in 1994 to stave off AMC opening a theatre in the Edenvale area of San Jose. Century made efforts to build, but kept getting put off by members of the San Jose City Council, who wouldn’t change the zoning in the area to allow for a theatre. AMC expressed interest in building in the area, in a location the city preferred. Finally, in a middle finger to the City Council, they built the Capitol 16 on the Capitol 6 Drive-in property—already zoned for a theater.
It was the last Century Theatres completely designed by architect Vince Rainey. Subsequent theatres had a significantly different—and much nicer—interior design. Shortly after, they stopped using Rainey completely favoring the standard theater design now used my most major chains: U-shaped box building, stadium seating, etc.
The Great Mall location was built to shut down other competition in the area (AMC Milpitas). Century was willing to canibalize itself in order to 1) kill off competition and 2) make a great deal more money off a larger location with significantly more foot traffic.
Century could run Berryessa at a minimal profit, because they owned the land. Once the company was sold to Cinemark—with Century’s parent company Syufy Enterprises retaining ownership of the land—it was no longer in Cinemark’s best interest to keep the theatre running. I’m thinking they will probably turn it into a strip-mall, or keep it as is and take the loss off on their taxes.
I worked at the T&C for a few years in the 80’s. I remember both Top Gun and The Natural each played there for seven months. Do any theaters keep a movie for more than two weeks?
Anyway, it had a fantastic curved ‘ribbon screen’. Instead of a single curved piece of material, it was a series of hundreds of 1.5" ribbons that slightly overlapped in a curve. The depth in that screen was amazing. I saw Out of Africa there and went to see it again at another theater (why I would see that again, I can’t remember) and it looked so flat! However, if the A/C blew too hard, it caused the ribbons to shift and it looked as if there were scratches in the film.
T&C had these amazing Norelco projectors. The most forgiving and quiet projector ever. They ran reel-to-reel until Century Theatres took over. However, they left the second projector up—so we actually had a backup projector!
When AMC came in they put in this small screen that they hyped as “the largest Torus compound screen west of the Mississippi.” (Whatever that was.) It looked like crap. Across the street were two 40 x 80 screens and there answer was to put in a 20 x 40 in the same space? When Mann and Century showed films in Scope, the picture practically went ceiling to floor and wall to wall. Look at that picture at the top, it’s practically a quarter of what T&C had before AMC.
Also, AMC had no idea how to run a single-screen. It was total culture shock for them. It was a slow, sad decline for such a great theatre.