Well, it’s official: the Loews/AMC CityPlace 14 movie theater will be no more after Sunday, when the once-popular theater bites the dust and a mixed-use residential/retail development that has already been approved by the zoning commission starts shaping up. The new property owners, Inland American Communities from Georgia, are looking at a model across the street for their plans — West Village. The Observer’s blog reports that Inland American also is responsible for some of the swanky new apartments in the Uptown area. Sounds like what has been happening east of Central is about to officially jump the road.
I suppose it was inevitable that the Loews complex would bite the dust once the new AMC theaters opened at NorthPark; after all, I guess most of us would rather attend movies at a slick, new, stadium-style seating complex in the center of a mall. But my family and I spent many, many hours pre-NorthPark AMC sitting at the Loews watching all kinds of movies; once, I even ran into the Cowboys’ Jerry Jones and his wife at the popcorn stand (this was right after he tightened his face a bit, and I must say that up-close he was a little scary back then).Come to think of it, towards the end, the Loews was a bit scary itself; the staff wasn’t very attentive and some of the clientele seemed to be unconcerned with others’ personal safety. Still, this is the inner-city (or at least, was), and event toward the end, it was rare that we didn’t run into a neighborhood resident/family there, too. RIP Loews Cityplace.
