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Showcase Cinemas West to be rebuilt National Amusements plans 16-screen theater Tuesday, June 15, 1999 By Ron Weiskind, Post-Gazette Movie Editor
The owner of Showcase Cinemas West in Robinson plans to demolish the building and replace it with a 16-screen theater featuring stadium seating for 3,200 customers, digital sound, expanded concessions and wall-to-wall curved screens.
National Amusements, based in Dedham, Mass., will tear down the existing 12-screen complex in two steps so that the theater, at Route 60 and the Parkway West adjacent to Robinson Town Centre, can stay open.
The plan has not yet been submitted to municipal officials in Robinson, who must approve the project.
As a result, no construction timetable has been set.
"We want to proceed as soon as possible," National Amusements spokeswoman Dana Wilson said.
The project would begin with demolition of five screens, which would be replaced with eight screens and a new lobby. Upon completion of that work, the remaining old screens would be torn down and eight more new ones would go up.
Showcase is one of two chains that have dominated the movie market in Pittsburgh for 25 years. The other is Carmike Cinemas and its predecessors, Cinema World and Cinemette.
New competitors are entering the region this year. Destinta Theaters of Lodi, N.J., will open a 22-screen megaplex with stadium seating next week in North Versailles. It is building a similar complex at the Chartiers Valley Shopping Center in Collier, just a few miles from Showcase Cinemas West. Destinta hopes to have that one open by the end of next month.
Loews Cineplex, based in New York City, is building new theaters in North Versailles and Homestead, both slated to open in November. Similar complexes have been proposed or investigated for Downtown, Monroeville and another site in Collier.
Although the first megaplex theater with stadium seating and improved sound and concessions was built in Dallas in 1995, the trend is only now reaching Pittsburgh. Carmike 10 at South Hills Village, which opened last year, was the first local theater to offer stadium seating. The Destinta theater in North Versailles will be the first with more than 20 screens.
Wilson said the rebuilding of Showcase Cinemas West was not necessarily related to the arrival of the new theaters, but is part of a schedule for renovating all of National Amusements' cinemas.
Wilson did not know whether there were plans to rebuild the chain's other Pittsburgh theaters, the Showcase Cinemas East in Wilkins and the Showcase Cinemas North in McCandless.
Showcase Cinemas East was the first of the three complexes, opening in 1976. Showcase Cinemas West opened in 1978, followed by the Showcase Cinemas North in 1979. Screens have been added to each theater over the years.
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