So Long, Lloyd Cinemas! You Won't Be Missed

photo by Bobby Roberts

RIP, LLOYD CINEMAS And RIP, Lloyd Center Cinemas' majestic marquee.

Not long ago, there were two multiplexes in the Lloyd District, both owned by the Knoxville-based Regal Entertainment Group: the Lloyd Mall 8, located inside the Lloyd Center Mall, and and the Lloyd Center 10, located across the street. Earlier this year, the perennially ignored Lloyd Mall 8 was turned into office space; now comes word that Lloyd Center 10 isn't long for this world. Via Elliot Njus at the Oregonian:

Bob Bisno, a Southern California developer, confirmed he and a group of partners has a contract to buy the site of the Regal Lloyd Center 10 & IMAX and the adjacent parking lot. They're planning, Bisno said, "what we think will be the most magnificent mixed-used development in the area, but perhaps in all of Portland." "We have very high hopes and expectations," he added. Early plans call for 980 residential units, retail space, community space and structured parking for 873 cars, according to city records. (Via.)

The phrase "The most magnificent mixed-use development in the area!" sounds like an outtake from The Office, but apparently those are the kind of actual words developers allow to fall out of their mouths. To be fair, it does sound better than "Hey, fuckos! Here's one more fucking development that'll be identical to all the other fucking developments that're popping up on every fucking corner of a city that you used to be able to afford to live in!"

In addition to the Lloyd Mall 8, Lloyd Cinemas follows downtown's Broadway Metroplex to the movie theater graveyard. Unless I'm forgetting any, it's the third Regal multiplex in Portland to close in a five-year span.

For those of you in Portland who enjoy The Regal Experience™, with its expensive tickets for fake IMAX, its pre-show ads, its texting jackasses, and TVs strobing at you while you stand in line for overpriced concessions—

*crickets* *tumbleweeds* *the wheezing gasp of a desiccated ghoul*

—don't worry! You've still got all sorts of corporate multiplexes at your disposal: Regal has downtown's Fox Tower 10 and Pioneer Place Stadium 6, plus Division Street out on SE 166th. Another chain, Cinemark Theatres, runs the Century 16 on SE 82nd and the Century Clackamas Town Center.

When the Broadway closed, one of Portland's independent theaters scored a bunch of equipment. Maybe something similar will happen again with Lloyd—that's a big multiplex, with a lot of stuff to get rid of. Even if that isn't the case, it's hard to imagine this won't be good news for the indie theaters in Portland that book first-run films—10 big screens, many of them with big auditoriums, will soon disappear from the middle of town. That means there are going to be a lot of Portland moviegoers looking for places to see movies.

Like anybody who's been going to movies for a while in Portland, I can't help but have a few fond memories of Lloyd Cinemas. (Wait. I have exactly three: Watching a dude in a lawn chair get pizza delivered to him while he sat in line for Revenge of the Sith; arguing about Attack the Block in the parking lot; and being very excited to see the first movie I ever saw there, John Woo's Windtalkers, a film that I cannot remember a single other thing about.) But for the most part, seeing movies at Lloyd Cinemas is a pretty soulless experience. The idea of all that land being repurposed is hardly exciting (or surprising), but I also can't imagine many Portlanders will be that upset about no longer being able to go to Lloyd Cinemas. We've got better theaters.