Mall expands with new stores, theaters

By Kristin Kernen and Matthew T. Seifert
Daily Staff Writers

North Grand Mall is expanding this summer with four new stores and a new theater with five new screens and full digital sound.

Shelley Goecke, spokesperson for North Grand Mall, said this means the mall will have 100 percent of its retail space filled, a long-time goal of the mall.

The new theater will open at the mall at 6 p.m. tomorrow, showing a variety of summer blockbusters including: The Cable Guy, The Rock, The Arrival, Dead Man Walking, and Thin Line Between Love and Hate. The Mall 2 Theaters will remain open, showing Spy Hard and Twister.

The new theaters, which are located by Sears department store, hope to attract moviegoers by offering more advanced sound systems and brand new facilities. Two benefits of the new theater will be a bigger snack bar and two digital sound houses.

Iowa State Daily, “Mall expands with new stores, theaters,” 13 Jun 1996

Read the full story here.

A throwback to the opening of Ames’ North Grand 5 theater.

Though it would become a second-run theater a few years after Cinemark bought the theater in 1999, North Grand 5 started out as a first-run theater adding to Ames’ large fleet of Central States theaters — Century III, Mall Theatres I and II, and Varsity 2, which re-opened this same weekend. Opening weekend also included a flood that caused some damage through Ames and I believe brought an end to Century III, which had frequent water problems because of its location in the flood plain.

The theater, commonly called the “dollar theater” after it became a second-run theater, closed in 2014, but with new ownership, it reopened in 2017 as North Grand Cinema.