The Mall Screens and the Multiplex

1973–2004 the mall houses · the Showplace 16, May 15, 1998 to the present

The pictures moved to the malls in the 1970s, and the first mall screen in the record is Scottsdale Mall's: a single screen opened by ABC Great-States on August 17, 1973, with Jesus Christ Superstar, passing to Plitt Theatres in 1974, twinned on June 8, 1984, taken over by Cineplex Odeon in 1985 and by Kerasotes in 1990. (The mall itself is carried in the malls record; its theatres belong here.) Kerasotes closed the twin on May 28, 1993, the day it opened six new screens upstairs in the same mall — the Scottsdale 6 — which ran until March 7, 2004; both houses were demolished with the mall's remains later that year.

On the north side, the Forum Cinemas I & II at North Village Mall, 52565 State Road 933, opened August 8, 1975, with The Other Side of the Mountain, seating 500 and 400; it became the three-screen Forum 3 on November 17, 1978, and closed after a fire in 1990; the mall itself was demolished in the fall of 2010. The same operator's name that ran the River Park's last years runs through this era's record — the small chains consolidating as the screens multiplied and shrank.

The era settled at the Showplace 16: opened by Kerasotes Theatres on May 15, 1998, on the Chippewa Drive-In's ground at 450 West Chippewa Avenue — sixteen screens on the parcel where the Moonlite had shown pictures to 600 cars. It passed with the Kerasotes circuit to AMC, as the AMC Showplace South Bend 16 and now the AMC Classic South Bend 16, and it stands open today. The present map of South Bend moviegoing, stated whole: one multiplex, the AMC Classic South Bend 16; the Morris, for stage bills and special screenings; and, across the city line, the fourteen-screen house on Edison Road in Mishawaka that its operator brands "Cinemark South Bend" — Mishawaka's theatre, boundary-printed here because its name claims this city. The downtown that held five first-run houses in 1928 holds none; the neighborhoods that held five more hold none; the whole of the city's film business sits in one building on the drive-in's ground.

Sources

1. Cinema Treasures, Scottsdale Mall Twin Cinema and Scottsdale 6 — the 1973 opening and feature, the chain succession, the 1984 twinning, the May 28, 1993 succession of the six-screen house, the March 7, 2004 closing, the 2004 demolition.
2. Cinema Treasures, Forum 3 Theatre — the August 8, 1975 opening and feature, the seat counts, the November 17, 1978 tripling, the 1990 fire closing, the mall's 2010 demolition.
3. Cinema Treasures, AMC Classic South Bend 16 — opened May 15, 1998, as the Kerasotes Showplace 16; AMC operation today.
4. Cinemark Theatres, theatre listings — the Movies 14 at 910 W. Edison Rd., Mishawaka, branded "Cinemark South Bend."