Local boy makes good
The Cricket didn't get to check out the newest multiplex in Utah - the 14-screen Cinemark University Mall in Orem - when it opened this weekend.
But he did get to talk with Alan Stock, Cinemark's CEO, who was in town to open the new facility.
It was a bit of a homecoming for Stock, who grew up in Roy, Utah, where he got his first job in a movie theater.
After serving his LDS mission, Stock came back to work as an assistant manager in northern Utah theaters in the old Consolidated Theatres chain - including the old Egyptian and Orpheum theaters in Ogden. In 1985, Cinemark Theatres bought a couple of Consolidated's theaters, and in 1986 Stock took a job in Cinemark's Texas headquarters.
In 1986, Cinemark had only eight theaters. Now it has 4,700 theaters nationwide - including one of Utah's biggest, the 24-screen facility at Jordan Landing.
The new theater in Orem boasts all-digital projection, stadium seating, and a cafeteria-style concession stand (similar to the set-up at Salt Lake's two Century Cinemas, a chain Cinemark bought up in 2006).
For all the new technology, Stock said, "the reality is that theaters today, compared to 50 years ago, are really not much different."
In the old movie palaces, Stock said, theater seating was sloped much as stadium-seating theaters today are. It was in the '80s and '90s, when strip-mall multiplexes bloomed, that theater operators got away from the stadium-style design.
"What we're doing isn't revolutionary... It's just going back to the way it started," he said.
But he did get to talk with Alan Stock, Cinemark's CEO, who was in town to open the new facility.
It was a bit of a homecoming for Stock, who grew up in Roy, Utah, where he got his first job in a movie theater.
After serving his LDS mission, Stock came back to work as an assistant manager in northern Utah theaters in the old Consolidated Theatres chain - including the old Egyptian and Orpheum theaters in Ogden. In 1985, Cinemark Theatres bought a couple of Consolidated's theaters, and in 1986 Stock took a job in Cinemark's Texas headquarters.
In 1986, Cinemark had only eight theaters. Now it has 4,700 theaters nationwide - including one of Utah's biggest, the 24-screen facility at Jordan Landing.
The new theater in Orem boasts all-digital projection, stadium seating, and a cafeteria-style concession stand (similar to the set-up at Salt Lake's two Century Cinemas, a chain Cinemark bought up in 2006).
For all the new technology, Stock said, "the reality is that theaters today, compared to 50 years ago, are really not much different."
In the old movie palaces, Stock said, theater seating was sloped much as stadium-seating theaters today are. It was in the '80s and '90s, when strip-mall multiplexes bloomed, that theater operators got away from the stadium-style design.
"What we're doing isn't revolutionary... It's just going back to the way it started," he said.
1:28 PM
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