Movie theaters increasingly are part of new

Movie theaters increasingly are part of new urbanist commercial centers. The first to be built was a two screen theater in downtown Celebration, near Orlando, in 1996. In 1997, a multiplex cinema opened in Redmond Town Center in Redmond, Washington. In Kentlands, a neotraditional development in Gaithersburg, Maryland, a six-screen cinema opened just before Christmas, 1998, in the new commercial Midtown district. The Kentlands theater is proving popular with both residents and people from the surrounding area. Other cinemas are under construction or completed in the new downtown of Cathedral City, California, and Harbour Island in Tampa, Florida. Imax theaters, which specialize in magnificent cinematography on oversize film projected on wraparound screens, will be included in the Cathedral City and Harbour Island projects. New urbanist town centers can offer the movie theater industry the pedestrian traffic of urban locations combined with the parking capacity of suburban malls. Furthermore, movie theaters are an excellent entertainment anchor for a pedestrian-scale neighborhood center.