AMC Theatres has signed a lease to bring a 12-theater multiplex to the Montclair Place shopping mall by 2019.

The 55,000-square-foot AMC Dine-in will be the city’s first indoor theater in nearly 20 years.

Montclair City Manager Ed Starr said he expects the theater to open by the 2019 holiday season.

“At one time Montclair was the only place you would go if wanted to see a movie, but over the years new theaters came in with better amenities,” he said.

The new theater, with luxury seating and amenities, will give Montclair an edge over neighboring cities with theaters, he said.

The theater will be located in a two-story, 134,000-square-foot entertainment and dining area that will replace the old Broadway department store just east of the Barnes & Noble store, facing the 10 Freeway.

Before the theater can be built, workers will have to demolish the old Broadway. The city issued CIM demolition permits in October 2017, but negotiations were ongoing.

Starr said demolition has already begun on the interior of the building, and a wrecking ball eventually will be used to take down the exterior. Almost all of the building will come down except for a portion on the north side, near Sears, because there is a utility vault, he said.

Thursday’s news is just the latest effort from CIM to reinvest in the property and generate more visitor traffic.

AMC’s project expands “the entertainment options and enhances our visitor experience at Montclair Place,” Shaul Kuba, co-founder and principal of CIM Group, said in a statement.

“Securing the lease with AMC is a signature component of our repositioning program to recreate Montclair Place,” Kuba stated.

Ryan Noonan, spokesman for AMC Theaters, said the dine-in option offers a slightly different concept from its traditional movie theaters. It allows customers the option of ordering from a more extensive menu either at a counter or from their seats in the theater and having the food delivered to them.

The company is sorting out which one of the two business models it will use at Montclair place, he said.

Montclair Cinemas – two buildings which housed eight theaters southwest of the mall property – opened in the 1970s and ’80s but shuttered by 2000.

A prominent Southern California outdoor drive-in, the Valley Drive-In, operated from 1948 to 1980 on Central Avenue and Holt Boulevard. The drive-in featured the world’s largest neon mural, according to the website of local humorist and author Charles Phoenix, who grew up in Ontario.

Another theater business called the Montclair Triplex was located on Holt Boulevard and Monte Vista Avenue, and one called Montclair 6 was located on Central Avenue and San Bernardino Road.

Montclair does have an outdoor theater. The Mission Tiki Drive-In Theatre and Swap Meet currently operates at 10798 Ramona Ave.

Councilman Bill Ruh, who has lived in Montclair all of his life and remembers the old theaters, said the new theater was worth the wait.

Ruh said he typically goes to the Laemmle’s in Claremont or the Edwards Ontario Mountain Village Stadium 14 in Ontario.

“This makes (Montclair Place) more of an attraction. We don’t have anything like this, especially in the eastern portion of LA County,” he said. “It’s a niche that isn’t here and when I go to movie theaters in LA like this, the places are always full.”

The focus for CIM going forward will be to add more entertainment amenities, Starr said.

“The intent is to draw from the area colleges and an older age group that has disposable cash,” he said.

Starr said the latest plans exceed initial efforts in 2015, which relied on bringing in new retail stores.

“The concern then was that the retail market started declining and Amazon and online shopping was an emerging influence,” he said. “Now we have seen how it affected the brick and mortar stores. (CIM) was able to step back and take some time to adjust to changes in the marketplace and develop a different plan.”

The shopping center’s owners want to attract other types of services that will help create a downtown between that and the future transit center. Montclair Place has begun a specific plan process that would look at adding residential and office space on the property, he said.