Mall Racing to Beat Downtown With First Theater

Ground-breaking plans are being prepared for a 53,000-sf site at the just-announced $140-million Plaza mixed-use venture in the central business district and a similar project at an estimated 60,000-sf, $6-million location at Colonial Properties Trust's 1.1-million sf Orlando Fashion Square regional mall.

But the mall project is expected to open its doors first, according to Colonial Properties officials. The mall theater, being developed by Houston-based Premiere Cinema Corp., is scheduled to break ground in first quarter 2004 and be ready for business by fall 2004. The Plaza's project, to be built by Birmingham, AL-based Amstar Entertainment LLC, is tentatively set to open in December 2005.

Although both theaters will be competing directly, their combined presence is expected to kick-start new retail, office, residential and entertainment development in and near the central business district and in east Orlando where the mall is located, area retail brokers and consultants tell GlobeSt.com.

General Cinemas Corp. operated a six-screen theater, Fashion Square 6, behind the mall until September 2000 when it closed the business. A new owner temporarily reopened the theater in January 2002 but shut it down permanently in March 2002 and converted the property into a technical school.

However, a rash of new apartment and condominium developments in and around Downtown over the past 18 months has interested cinema developers into entering the theater market here again, brokers following the entertainment scene tell GlobeSt.com.