University City Cinema
480 Ackerman Road,
Columbus,
OH
43202
480 Ackerman Road,
Columbus,
OH
43202
1 person
favorited this theater
Showing 12 comments
Two screens on October 7th, 1977
The Great Western and University City Cinema both opened on November 16th, 1966. shared grand opening ad posted.
Wow. I lived in University Village for several years and would have loved to have had easy access to a theater. I would eat at Applebees at least weekly. I had no idea that a theater was there and I lived there around 1999.
Sorry, Chuck, didn’t mean that to come out as hostile as I now realize it sounded. I just thought it was kind of strange that every theater I was landing on had you giving a date, then someone else saying “it was open longer than that”. No problems. We’re all just trying to share what we know; sorry for sounding snotty.
As someone who’s lived in Columbus for a long time, I keep noticing that “Chuck” has a habit of listing closing years for theaters that are early by a year or two, yet he says it with such concise authority, like he’s certain of it. I also, like a poster above, saw Terminator 2 here, so it was still open at least into 1991.
My fondest memory of the theater is taking a break from the film project I was editing at OSU late one evening, walking down the hill to Ackerman Road, and catching “Return of the Living Dead”, which I didn’t really expect to be any good. Turned out I loved it, and was humming the closing song to myself while walking back past the gigantic cemetery which is on the north side of Dodridge. Appropriate.
I saw Madonna: Truth or Dare there. That would mean the theater was still open in May 1991.
Theater interior and exterior were functional and unremarkable, as previous commenters have observed.
The Applebee’s that currently occupies the site has a framed snapshot of the old theater hanging on the wall just inside the entrance.
Columbus Dispatch archives show this theatre closing in late 1991.
It had to have been still open in 1991, as I saw Terminator 2 there. The theater still had a very 1960s lobby decor (big white ball lights, chrome and walnut veneer concession stand?) and the seats were upholstered in red, white and blue vinyl. As with many twinned theaters, projection was from an original porthole near a rear corner of the split auditorium, making for a suboptimal presentation.
Here is a January 1969 ad from the Columbus Dispatch:
http://tinyurl.com/yttv34
The address was 480 Ackerman Road.
This was a generic, blue shadowbox GCC house. It was twinned in the ‘'80’s. It was one of the first theatres in the area with Dolby Stereo. Did play at least 2 of the Sensurround films (Earthquake and Rollercoaster.) Local GCC office may have been located here.
Now an Applebees.
General Cinema had many theatres designed like this in Columbus now gone: the Town & Country and the Great Western for example. All were free-standing single screens later twinned. And all are now gone.
If I recall correctly, what finally doomed the University City was not just GC’s pullout, but a large flood of water (pipe burst?) that so damaged the interior that anyone who wanted to perhaps take on the property was scared off by the repair bills.