El Paso's sprawling East Side will get the city's newest movie theater.
Plano's Cinemark theaters announced plans to build a 14-screen theater on the southeast corner of Montana Avenue and Rich Beem Boulevard, just east of Loop 375 and west of the Zaragoza/Montana intersection.
The announcement doesn't say when construction will start or when the theater will open.
Cinemark's fourth El Paso theater will include one XD auditorium, with state-of-the-art sound, digital projection and a 72-foot screen.
All auditoriums will have floor-to-ceiling screens, 4k digital projection with 3D capability and sound systems that "will enable customers to hear the movie as the filmmakers intended," according to a release from the company.
The new theater also will have self-serve concessions.
Cinemark, which has 461 theaters and 5,207 screens in the U.S., Mexico and 12 Latin American countries, also operates the Tinseltown (20 screens), Cielo Vista (14) and West (12) theaters in El Paso.
The new theater will boost Cinemark's already dominant screen count in El Paso from 46 to 60 and increase the number of first-run screens in the market from 90 to 104.
They compete with Premiere Cinemas' 18-screen theater at Bassett Place, Carmike's 16-screener near Cohen Stadium and AmStar's 10-screen Grand Theatre at Freedom Crossing on Fort Bliss, which opened last year.
Though the press release referred to the new theater's location on the city's Northeast side, it actually will will be positioned near the northern edge of the city's sprawling East Side and the southern border of rapidly going East Fort Bliss.
El Paso could benefit from an IMAX theater. I often thought that a good spot for this is right next door to the Cinemark theaters on the West side. No one wants to travel down south to Juarez to their IMAX.
Posted by: Marlene | September 05, 2012 at 07:28 PM
Agreed. Been saying that since I got here. Cinemark has its version of IMAX, called XD, but IMAX is IMAX. Having had one in the last town where I lived, which was half the size, wish we had one here.
Posted by: Doug Pullen | September 06, 2012 at 12:38 PM