Woodland Hills : 16-Screen Theater to Replace Saks Store

AMC Theatres plans a March 29 grand opening for a 16-plex theater at the Promenade at Woodland Hills.

The 3,000-seat AMC Promenade 16 Theatres will be one of the largest in the Valley, second only to the 18-screen Cineplex Odeon in Universal City.

The new theater, at Oxnard Street and Topanga Canyon Boulevard, will create about 200 full- and part-time jobs, said Michael Strle, vice president/group manager for the New York City-based O’Connor Group, which owns the mall.

A nine-unit food court in the same building, he said, is expected to create an additional 70 full- and part-time jobs.

The $20-million, 120,000-square-foot facility replaces a building that housed a Saks Fifth Avenue department store until the Northridge earthquake, when the building was damaged beyond repair, officials said.

The old building was torn down to make way for the new one.

The new movie theater will include seats with retractable arms so the chairs can be turned into love seats, officials said. Locating theaters in malls is designed to draw more customers to the shopping centers, said Strle.

“People want to be able to combine shopping with dining with entertainment, and they don’t want to have to get in their cars and drive to do it,” he said.

To accommodate the expected extra traffic at the mall, Strle said that numerous trees were removed so that the parking lot could be redesigned with 250 additional parking spaces. As many as 60 new trees will be planted to replace the ones removed, he said.