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Capitol 8 Cinemas, 201 Columbia Mall Boulevard (Capitol Centre): Feb 2000   9 comments

Posted at 1:23 pm in closing

Capitol Centre is a hard-luck strip mall directly across from Columbia Mall (it shares access from the loop road around the Columbia Mall parking lot). It has never prospered, and as Columbia Mall has declined, it has done even worse. Most of the places there that have come and gone, I didn't care about at all, but there were a few that caught my notice.

The Capitol Centre Theatres were one such place:

This was a typical multiplex, built before the current fad for stadium seating, not bad not great. I think its main problem was that being only a parking-lot away from the (twice dead and resurrected) Columbia Mall theaters, it was hard to establish a unique identity or to make it the default theater of habbit for locals. Back when Pat Berman was still doing movie reviews in The State, she did an interview with a local theater manager at a time when several local theaters were going under, and asked him if the market were overbuilt. He replied that no, it was "under-fannied" (too few fannies on seats). I think circumstances conspired to make Capitol Place Theater under-fannied.

You would think that working movie projectors would be valuable and salable assets, at least until the digital switchover of the last few years, but apparently not:

Not much of a theater without projectors in the auditoriums, but it wouldn't take much to put the lobby back in service:

This lets us date the closing to no earlier than 28 Jan 2000 when Eye of the Beholder opened:

It also lets us pinpoint the proximate cause of the theater's closure: Robin Williams

UPDATE 29 September 2017 -- Changed the post title to Capitol 8 Cinemas from Capitol Centre Theatre based on an old phonebook. Also added the street address from same.

9 Responses to 'Capitol 8 Cinemas, 201 Columbia Mall Boulevard (Capitol Centre): Feb 2000'

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  1. This is planned to reopen as a hispanic theater

    Kc

    13 May 08 at 4:07 pm

  2. That could work. It's an unserved market in Columbia.

    ted

    13 May 08 at 6:21 pm

  3. Hello my friends :)
    ;)

    Tyncnitly

    15 May 08 at 9:48 am

  4. I used to work at the now defunct Phoenix Theatres across the parking lot as a projectionist and I've always wondered if the projectors were still sitting inside Capitol 8. How cool would it be to snag one and set it up in an old barn or garage somewhere?

    Fascinating website by the way.

    Stewart

    12 Jun 08 at 1:35 pm

  5. I went to a movie at this theater on my very first date in 1992.

    aquarius

    14 Oct 08 at 10:27 pm

  6. The place is currently trying (unsuccessfully?) to re-open as a $2.00 discount cinema.

    ted

    14 Oct 08 at 11:19 pm

  7. ^Spam, ted!

    Hey! What's with this?

    Your comment was a bit too short. Please go back and try again.

    Looking for a bit more longwinded posts?

    jamie

    26 Feb 10 at 12:42 pm

  8. Jamie,

    The spam filter is not perfect (otherwise, it would not have let in the comment before yours, which I deleted as spam).

    The most common problem is to let a spam comment go through. Much less frequently, it says a good comment (like yours) is spam and makes you retry..

    ted

    26 Feb 10 at 12:57 pm

  9. Ken

    15 Jan 19 at 12:33 pm

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