Sunshine Mall 5
Missouri Avenue,
Clearwater,
FL
33756
Missouri Avenue,
Clearwater,
FL
33756
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Last operated by Carmike for a short period of time, closed on November 12, 1995.
Reopened as Plitt Sunshine Mall Five by Cineplex Odeon on May 30th, 1986. Ad posted.
Yes, I forgot the name of the eye glass place. Its been years since I was down that way. My friend’s mom worked there when I was a kid. I know that mall was dead for a long time,but it was a fun place to go for kids/teens for movies and the arcade inside the mall . Was the only place for local kids to go after the skating rink closed down late 80’s on Missouri, now its a salvation army store.
akow: Is the eyeglasses place you refer to the Visionworks at 912 S. Missouri, and the strip mall the building next door with an insurance office at 918 and three currently (in Google street view) vacant storefronts south of it?
I just want to add something about the closing of it, the owner did sell it to someone but it wasn’t a condo developer, it was to the Church of Scientology. They built the Condos for their people, and years later they opened it to rent to anyone. Now its a section 8 hot bed. The place is run down and all the units have been tore up . Most pizza places won’t go there at night for fear of being robbed. I know because I was a manger for the local Pizza hut LOL . Sad, they closed the theater down when they did, It started to pick up being a dollar theater . Friday and Saturdays was always jammed packed . But the new owners for some reason felt they needed a pond there :/ they left the eye glasses place alone and built a strip mall in front of theater and where the wall was .
I worked there from about 1992 until a few months before it closed . I started as an usher and left as the projection manager"most of the time we only had two projectionist “ A woman named Brenda was the Theater manager when I left, when I first started, I think the manager name was Rick. was a great place to work and I started going there When the first star wars came out ” i’m sure it was a two plex at the time. I spent a lot of summer days there :) I remember being in middle school when they closed down to make it a 5 plex . If anyone has photos of it during the 80’s and 90’s,I would love to see them. sadly I don’t have any pictures of it :( lost all my family photos when my sister put them in storage and failed to pay :/ So post if you do, i’m following this topic
The December 13, 1977 issue of the St. Petersburg Independent had an article about the reopening of the Sunshine Mall Theatre, which was to take place the following night (scan at Google News.) The article says that the architects for the twinning were Brookbank, Murphy & Shields, but they were most likely acting as supervising architects, as the Eberson Archives list Drew Eberson as architect for the remodeling as well as the original Trans-Lux Sunshine Theatre of 1968.
This capsule history of Clearwater’s Sunshine Mall at Mall Hall of Fame says that the “…single-screen, Trans-Lux Theatre showed its first feature in mid-October 1968.”
The John and Drew Eberson Archives at the Wolfsonian Institute lists the Trans-Lux Sunshine Theatre as a 1968 project by Drew Eberson. He was also the architect for the theater’s twinning, which the Mall site says took place in 1977.
John and Drew Eberson were designing projects for Trans-Lux during the 1950s, and Drew Eberson continued to design theaters for the chain, both new houses and remodeling and twinning jobs, through the 1970s. He also designed offices for Trans-Lux at Norwalk, Connecticut in 1968.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=J2dQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ulgDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4888,3008484&dq=sunshine+mall+theaters&hl=en Article on twining the theater
Yes,I saw that 1974-1986 Plitt.I am pretty sure that was an ABC THEATRE in 1974.I don’t think PLitt came in until 1978 or so.I worked for both chains.
The precise location of the Sunshine Mall Cinemas was 27.956221 N, -82.788905 W (can be googled) There is a retention pond there now. I liked it in the 80’s as it was never crowded and close to home!
My family has a long history with Sunshine Mall Theaters. My grandmother worked there when it was Trans-Lux. My sister and brother worked there when it was an ABC and then as it was Plitt. I worked there when I was in high school when it was a Plitt and Cineplex Odeon. Great memories!
Google has posted Microfilms for the newspapers for this area.
Expansions:
1968 one cinema opened as Trans-Lux
1974 renamed Sunshine Mall Cinema
1977 2 cinemas
1986 5 cinemas
Owners:
1974-1986 Plitt
1986-1995 Cineplex Odeon
I have not gone through the 1990’s.
I used to play in the orange groves in the early/mid 1960s that became the site for Sunshine Mall in 1968. Sunshine Mall’s first theater in 1968 was a single-theater called “Trans-Lux Theater” — it was expanded and split into two theaters just a year or two later, about 1970. Soon after, it expanded again and split into the five-theater “Sunshine Mall 5” in the mid/late 1970s if I remember right. It was a great theater experience in all of its manifestations, and each theater was larger than nowadays. (The mall had a great diner called Robert’s Cafeteria too.)