Watts Mill Cinema

rivest - to what article are you referring; no link or photo.

The Kansas City Star – October 18, 1996

Watts Mill Cinema closes Move is part of a plan to bring seven other movie theaters out of bankruptcy. Watts Mill Cinema in south Kansas City shut its doors this week as part of a plan to bring a group of area theaters out of bankruptcy.The closing came after both former and current managers told a bankruptcy trustee the theater didn’t do enough business to cover costs and was not likely to do so in the future.“It lost a lot of money,” said Bill Burnett, a vice president for Dickinson Theatres, which was chosen last month to operate the eight movie houses under a Chapter 11…

I believe that Watts Mill was originally a quad when it opened in March of 1973. It was opened by Mid-America theater circuit, which was in the midst of a big expansion in the Kansas City area in the early-1970s. Boxoffice Magazine of April 2, 1973, says that the theater was Mid-America’s first quad to be opened as part of a shopping center (i.e. within the structure of the strip shopping center itself) as opposed to being adjacent to a shopping center.