Starlight Lakewood Center

At a cost of $1 million dollars and eight months of construction Pacific’s Lakewood Center Theatre, designed by George T. Nowak and Mel C. Glatz, opened on January 17, 1968 with Sidney Poitier in “To Sir, With Love”. The Long Beach Press-Telegram said that the 1,200-seat venue was Pacific Theatres 71st location, most of them drive-ins. Pacific Theatres chose Merrill DeVine to be its managing director. DeVine previously managed the Picwood, Hollywood Pantages and the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles.

On hand at the opening festivities, which the paper said 10,000 attended, were actors Jim Brown, Troy Donahue and Rudy Vallee. The architecture was very 1960’s modern with a large curved glass front, a gigantic lobby and a 60-foot concession stand. Pacific Theatres said that the four Austrian-made chandeliers in the lobby were valued at $6,000 each.

May 22, 1974 saw the opening of two more screens and then on October 24 it became the Lakewood 4. In June of 1981, the Lakewood Center South 1,2,3 opened in a new building at another location in the mall’s parking lot.

On March 19, 1999 after months of construction, during which it was closed and gutted and 56,000 square feet was added to the building, the brand new Lakewood Center Stadium 16 opened. It was designed by architect Dan Tanizaki with GFBA Architects.

The Press-Telegram said that the $12 million renovation brought its total number of seats to 4,800. And by the way, the original Austrian chandeliers are still hanging in the lobby.

It was closed on March 17, 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It was announced on April 13, 2021 that the closure would be permanent in all Pacific/ArcLight theatres. It was taken over by Starlight Theatres and following renovations it reopened in late-May 2024.

Recent comments (view all 30 comments)

samwisefan on August 24, 2021 at 9:33 pm

The original 1200-seat screen remains one of the best movie screens in Southern California. And 4 of the “newly” added stadium-style screens are very nice as well. It’s the smaller screens they added that are completely abysmal. Who at the dawn of the 21st century builds a movie screen with an aisle down the center of the theatre?!?! Ridiculous. That said, if you can ever see a film on the original huge screen, it’s soooo worth it. Hopefully someone will rescue this location from its permanent closure.

MSC77 on February 26, 2023 at 3:19 pm

A chronology of the Gateway Cities’ 70mm presentation history has recently been published. Lakewood Center is mentioned numerous times.

BigScreen_com on June 26, 2023 at 1:15 pm

This theater will be reopening in Summer 2023 as the Starlight Lakewood Center (Starlight Cinemas).

Lakewood, CA: Starlight Lakewood Center Opening Soon, Now Hiring [Jun 27, 2023]

Edward Havens on July 17, 2023 at 10:38 am

Signage for the new operator is already up.

Fanofcomedy on July 30, 2023 at 1:09 am

1st movie i saw at Pacific Lakewood was Oliver & Company 1st PG movie i saw there was Star Trek V The Final Frontier 1st PG-13 movie I saw there was Batman 1st R Rated movie i saw there was Dead Presidents When it re-opened as Stadium 16 in 1999 the 1st i saw was Ravenous Last movie i saw there in Jan 2020 was Bad Boys For Life 2 MONTHS BEFORE THE PANDEMIC

Nothing But Cinema on May 24, 2024 at 3:57 pm

Theater is open again

m00se1111 on May 24, 2024 at 4:14 pm

Indeed! please update this to open and update linkage

https://www.starlightcinemas.com/locations/g01vg-starlight-lakewood-center/

rivest266 on May 25, 2024 at 4:05 am

2024 grand opening ads posted.

Nothing But Cinema on May 25, 2024 at 10:15 pm

The theater re-opened on July 21st, 2023, and has been open since

Source: https://www.lakewoodcity.org/News/General-city-info-news-stories/Movie-theater-at-Lakewood-Center-is-now-open

Nothing But Cinema on July 25, 2024 at 5:25 pm

I visited this theater last week and it’s a shame how little they care about maintaining the main auditorium. There is a prominent chromatic aberration issue with the projector, and they’re not bothering to mask the screen for films with a 1.85 aspect ratio (the sound also sucks but I feel like it’s probably hard to fix that). With that being said, theaters 2-5 seem nice, with stadium seating and 1.85 screens