Other chains interested in taking over Crown Center theater space
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
Posters that would have once let moviegoers know what was playing can no longer be seen outside Washington Crown Center’s multiplex, which has closed.
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
The box office sits empty at the Washington Crown Center movie theater, which has closed. It opened in 2000.
Movie theaters have been slowly coming out of mothballs throughout 2021, and exhibitors are hoping that big-screen holiday offerings like Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story” and “The Matrix Resurrections” will entice audiences back to the multiplexes in full force.
There are no moviegoers lining up at the 14-screen complex at Washington Crown Center, though. It sits empty, with no posters letting ticket buyers know what is playing, and a box office that is dark and depopulated.
Like most other movie theaters in the United States and around the world, the Crown Center multiplex turned off its projectors and unplugged its popcorn machine in March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic settled over the globe and brought everyday life and commerce to a halt. But unlike many of its counterparts, the Crown Center multiplex has never reopened.
That means that for the first time since at least the 1910s and the dawn of moviegoing in the United States, there is no theater in Washington County showing new movies.
The multiplex, which opened in 2000, had been operated by the Regal Cinemas, the chain based in Knoxville, Tenn. According to Civil Knox, Crown Center’s general manager and marketing director, Regal had contacted her “eight to 10 times” with different dates to reopen the theater, but “one day they came and took everything out.”
Late last year, the owners of Washington Crown Center filed a civil lawsuit against Regal Cinemas in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, alleging the chain had not paid rent since March 2020 and owed $360,000.
A spokesman for Regal Cinemas did not respond to a request for comment.
There is some hope, however, movies will be shown on the big screen once again at Crown Center. Other theater chains have expressed an interest in taking over the space, Knox said, and she would be glad to have one of them come onboard.
“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” she said.
The loss of the movie theater has been yet another blow to Crown Center, which has lost several anchors like Sears and Bon-Ton department stores, along with several smaller stores. Malls like Crown Center have been buffeted by the rise of big-box retailers and online shopping.
“We’re not dead yet,” Knox said. “We’re not closing the doors.”
Crown Center’s multiplex is not the only one of its type to close over the last decade. The six-screen theater operated by AMC at Uniontown Mall permanently shut down this summer. In 2013, a multiplex at Washington Mall closed. One-screen theaters that had once been fixtures of many downtowns in the region were almost all gone by the 1990s. Greene County still has one drive-in movie theater that operates in the warm-weather months, and Fayette County has two drive-in theaters.
The movie theaters closest to Washington are Marquee Cinemas Highlands 14 in Triadelphia, W.Va., and the multiplex operated by Phoenix Theatres in Bridgeville.