Grand Prairie Premiere Lux Cine

dallasmovietheaters on April 28, 2016 at 11:01 am

United Artists purchased land in southern Grand Prairie in Westchester Parkway just off of Interstate 20 on the south to launch a theater that opened August 24, 1995 called the UA Grand Prairie. While much of the attention was going to 16-24 screen megaplexes of the era — especially the AMC Grand and Cinemark 17 which had launched just months earlier in Dallas — UA was more conservative building 9-11 screen complexes. UA built its Lakepointe 10 theater in Lewisville opening in December 1994 and would build this very similar facility in Grand Prarie along with two Fort Worth complexes opening in 1997 with the Fossil Creek 11 and the nearby Eastchase 9 with all stadium seating.

Much like it would in 1995 with its then-forthcoming UA Galaxy, the circuit was going after a contemporary Cinemark multiplex in the Cinemark Movies 16 within eyeball’s distance across the street to the west. With screen count already in favor of the established Cinemark property, UA spent its money on the presentation creating two 490-seat auditoriums with THX certification and all 10 screens having DTS multichannel audio. 2,550 seats were found in the entire complex.

The UA G-P 10 theater opened with a soft launch with the films, “Desperado,” “Lord of Illusions,” “The Amazing Panda Adventure,” and “The Show” and then went for a slate of full shows the next day on August 25, 1995.

But United Artists, itself, fell on hard times and the circuit dropped theater after theater in the area and around the country. UA which once had theaters all over Dallas-Fort Worth would be taken over by Regal and would have only a handful of theaters leaving behind theaters including the Plaza, the MacArthur Marketplace in Irving, the Eastchase, the UA Hulen, the UA Bedford, the UA Bowen in Arlington, UA Las Vegas Trail in White Settlement, the Keystone which it had acquired from AMC, the UA North Star in Garland.

Regal didn’t do justice to the UA Grand Prairie at the outset as THX designation went away With many competing theaters opening to the east in South Arlington, the UA G-P stayed pretty much unchanged. Even the aging neighbor, the Cinemark 16, would upgrade to recliner seating hoping to stay current. Regal kept fighting film clearance battles with Cinemark as it reached its twentieth year of operation in August of 2015. But a month earlier, the end was near for the UA G-P as United Development purchased the three of the final four DFW-area UA theatres.

Under the United Development deal, the UA Galaxy and UA Fossil Creek would continue as luxury cinemas but that the UA Grand Prairie at the the end of 2015. (UA’s other property, the Regal Macarthur Marketplace was note listed in the deal.) In a typical low-key Regal/UA closing, the UA G-P was shuttered after the Sunday night December 13, 2015 showings. But at least the UA G-P had made it to its 20th anniversary. The plan was to convert the theatre to retail uses or, failing that, to find a church to take advantage of tax breaks to locate within the former facility.

rivest266 on June 28, 2018 at 12:57 pm

August 24th, 1995 grand opening ad in the photo section.