Lochwood Cinema
Jupiter Road & Garland Road,
Dallas,
TX
75218
Jupiter Road & Garland Road,
Dallas,
TX
75218
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It was free standing kind of like the Big Town Mall.
I’ve been trying to sleuth my way down memory lane to see if I can remember if this is where I saw Bambi when it was re-released in 1982, and the Secret Of NIMH, when I was 5 or so years old. Was this always a free standing theater, or was it incorporated into a strip shopping center then? I have absolutely no memories left of the Lochwood shopping Center before it was redeveloped sometime in the mid 90s, except the CAROUSEL sign with the billiard ball clock on it – but I may have sketchy memories of the theater.
The Lochwood Village Shopping Center opened Aug. 15, 1957. Its success led to expansion. That included the Lochwood Cinema which opened in 1966 as part of the General Cinema Corp. (GCC) Circuit. The Lochwood was situated at the confluence of N. Garland Rd., Jupiter Rd. and Lochwood Blvd. Lochwood Cinema was the chain’s third Dallas location along with Big Town, NorthPark and joined by the similar Park Plaza which would open the following month in Arlington.
The $378,000 theater had the distinctive GCC white brick walls, an art gallery entrance, smokers area, giant Cinema sign, and 507 parking spaces. GCC said it was the first White Rock area theater to be constructed in 20 years. The theater opened April 7, 1966 with That Darn Cat. Coincidentally, Interstate’s Belaire Theater in Hurst opened to the public a day after an invitational screening with the same film on the same date.
Much like the aforementioned Park Plaza, GCC twinned the Lochwood. The shopping center became the Treehouse Mall as a number of the shops were placed into an enclosed mall in 1974, a practice not uncommon in that era. General Cinema renamed the Lochwood as the Treehouse in June of 1974. A downturn and a new owner led the mall to change names to the Lochwood Mall in 1979 but the retail prospects continued to dim. General Cinema changed the name away from the Treehouse and back to its original Lochwood nameplate accordingly.
General Cinema would get roughly its 20 years of life from the property and would drop it from the circuit. I believe it soldiered on briefly as the Cine 2 before becoming vacant and considered by locals an eyesore by the beginning of the 1990s. Pigeons were the only customers of the deserted theater which was demolished along with the shopping complex in 1990/1. The White Rock Marketplace took the place of the mall which was still in existence as of the 2010s.
The address (Jupiter Road & Garland Road) is all wrong; that is the closest major intersection that bounded the outlying parking areas of the original Lochwood Shopping Center (no longer there, as the entire property has been totally re-developed). Actual location of the theater was where the Home Depot is located at 11287 Lochwood Blvd., near the intersection with Marchant Circle.