Cinedome 9

Opened as a 5-plex.

I was involved in the setup, and alignment of the initial theaters in 1982. It was my first experience with 70mm, but as a television broadcast engineer I was not phased. At opening the large dome was a single theater, with a 35/70 projector. I don’t recall which of the other domes had the other 35/70. The sad part was the projection window for the dome on the far left was not properly aligned with the screen, causing a bit of keystoning, and the image was always out of focus on both sides of the screen. Whenever I went into that dome to view a movie, I was always disappointed for that reason. I am not sure if the building was ever corrected for this error in the building design.

The Cinedomes were built by Syufy/Century Theatres. The theatre opened in 1982 (not 1983) with five screens. In fact, the phone number for the recorded showtimes was 338-1982, so chosen because that’s the year it opened. There was always the intention to add three more screens; when opened there was a walled-off hallway on the back right side of the lobby, which eventually led to screens 6-8 when they opened for summer of 1985. I was a projectionist with Century Theatres for many years, and worked at the Cinedomes on many occasions. It was a fine theatre which had a lot of life left in it when it was closed. Auditoriums one and four were excellent, 70mm capable, with large screens and about 500 seat apacity. Auditoriums two, three, and five were also nice, a little smaller but much larger than most auditoriums today. Century did split auditorium seven in 1992, leaving the two new auditoriums seven and eight pretty small. In the mid-90s, the Cinedomes became the victim of the worst neglect I’ve seen any owner impart on a theatre. Anyone who worked or visited there during that period will remember the terrible, disintegrating roof. During the winter the rain would literally pour into the lobby and most of the auditoriums. I remember the poor maintenance guy having to replace dozens of ceiling tiles in the lobby during bad weather. They were buying ceiling tiles by the case, sometimes every week. Only to have the tiles get wet and turn to goo and fall out again. The box office was frequently soaked. On many occasions the entrance to a couple of auditoriums had several inches of standing water at the doorway. Water pooled up in the lower portion of many auditoriums, in the front rows, rusting the seats. Amazingly this went on for a few years before the company finally spung for a new roof. Then they remodeled the lobby and put in a new, nice snack bar. They also put in new seats in main auditoriums in 1999, before Star Wars Episode I came out. At that point, the Cinedomes was a really nice theatre. And of course, Century closed it a couple years later and tore it down, putting up a 16-plex on the site.