Collin Creek Cinema

Photo from the Adam Martin collection.

501 Accent Dr Plano TX

Information for this tour was contributed by Mark Richey.

By the mid 1980s, General Cinema had at least one theater in or near every mall in the Dallas area, with one exception. That was Plano’s Collin Creek Mall, which finally got its own General Cinema on May 22, 1987. The theater (which was actually across Plano Parkway from mall property and down another street) opened with a contest promising to send two lucky patrons to Hollywood. Maybe they realized that was the only way to get people to the theater to see the opening lineup, "Ernest Goes to Camp", "Munchies", "Opposing Force", "The Stepfather", "Hoosiers", and "The Chipmunk Adventure".

I have a soft spot for this theater since I worked there during the summers of 1996 and 1997, after my freshman and sophomore years of college. It was fairly stunning to see how the Cinemark Tinseltown and Loews Keystone, which opened in late 1996 and early 1997 respectively, affected business. Summer 1996, we were jam-packed full through the end of June, thanks to "Mission: Impossible", "Twister", and "The Rock". Business slumped after that, since our next big opening was, um, "Striptease" (on two screens!). (July wasn’t much better, with the only movie we got that came close to being a hit was "Courage Under Fire". Otherwise, we got "The Frighteners", "Supercop", and "Kingpin"). Still, they all did better than the next summer, when we opened "The Lost World" on three screens, and didn’t sell out a single one of them opening weekend (meanwhile, the Tinseltown had the 11th highest gross on that film in the country). The next summer (when I had gotten another job) was even worse. I had no problems getting tickets to "Armageddon" opening weekend.

General Cinema had been closing a bunch of theaters during the previous few years, and they pulled the plug on Collin Creek on September 21, 1998. The final lineup was "54", "Blade", "The Avengers", "Ever After", "The Parent Trap", "Napoleon", and "Armageddon". I tended to follow what was playing in the theater even when I was at school, and couldn’t figure out why they weren’t getting any new films. The previous Sunday’s Dallas Morning News ad had even listed they were going to open "One True Thing" on what turned out to be the final weekend. Instead, it opened at the Central Park.

I had heard that a number of the staff members had been transferred to NorthPark when the Collin Creek closed. Of course, I thought that was a terrific promotion. Little did anyone know that the NorthPark would shutter only about a month later (the Morning News article about the theater’s demise actually quoted my former boss, who was the general manager of NorthPark when it shuttered).

The theater still stands empty. The marquee on Plano Parkway advertises a church ... at another location. The last time I drove by it, the front had been completely borded up and the marquee over the front doors had been taken down.

February 2015 photos from the Adam Martin collection.

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January 2000 photos from the Adam Martin collection.

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• Cinema Treasures

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Last featured 6/26/2005. Last edited 2/14/2015.