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The Hollywood Theatre will soon offer travelers another way to pass the time at Portland International Airport.

(The Oregonian/Oregonlive)

A movie theater is coming soon to Portland International Airport.

Northeast Portland's Hollywood Theatre plans to open an annex at PDX as early as late spring.

The theater is slated to seat 18, with standing room for another 10 to 20 people and a space for live performances.

It will screen short films, typically one to five minutes long, said Doug Whyte, the nonprofit theater's executive director. The program will spotlight Portland artists, as well as films about the city and the state of Oregon.

No "experience" will last longer than 20 minutes because travelers aren't used to spending lots of time in airport galleries, said Justen Harn, director of programs and community engagement.

Regional artists who use video or film in their work will be awarded residencies pairing them with nationally famous artists with Oregon roots, Harn said. A local filmmaker might be mentored by Miranda July, for example. Even a local dancer might be eligible.

For travelers, all shows will be free.

The Port of Portland, which runs the airport, donated the theater space as part its public art program, Whyte said. The 650 square feet near Gate C5 had been used as a business center, mostly servicing passengers of Alaska Airlines, which dominated the concourse but is set to move to the airport's northern half.

"It's a really prominent location," Whyte said. "Anybody going down the C Concourse won't be able to miss the marquee."

A draft rending of the Hollywood Theatre annex at PDX

The theater's design is still in development, but the exterior should include a marquee and a vertical blade sign that echoes the one hanging outside the Spanish Colonial Revival icon in Northeast Portland, said Rick Potestio, the project architect.

The inside will likely feature curtains and traditional movie theater chairs, maybe even an old film projector.

"Our concept in there is making a really comfortable environment that is acoustically separate from the airport," Potestio said. "We really want you to feel like you're in a theater space, but not miss your flight or trip over luggage."

Potestio has been thinking about how to signal to travelers unfamiliar with Portland that Hollywood is not a California reference, but rather a local one.

"We don't want people to see this and think that Portland has sold the space out to some L.A. producers or something," he said. "This isn't some Hollywood implant."

The Hollywood Theatre first opened its curtains in Portland in 1926.

The annex plan has been in the works for about two years, since Whyte saw a newspaper article about a movie theater in the airport in Tokyo.

Major airports in Asia have jumped on the trend, but American airports have been slower to embrace the idea. An exception is Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, which put in a screening room last year as part of a luxury lounge.

Grants from Travel Oregon and the Oregon Community Foundation provided initial funding, but the theater continues to raise money for the project, Whyte said.

-- Carli Brosseau

cbrosseau@oregonian.com

503-294-5121; @carlibrosseau