Studio 28 was a cinema multiplex located on 28th Street in

Wyoming, Michigan Wyoming is a city in Kent County, Michigan, Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 76,501 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Wyoming is the second most-populated community in the Grand Rapids metropolitan area ...

, operational from 1965 to 2008. Expanding to a maximum of 20 screens, it was the first

megaplex A multiplex is a movie theater complex with multiple screens within a single complex. They are usually housed in a specially designed building. Sometimes, an existing venue undergoes a renovation where the existing auditoriums are split into s ...

, and was once the largest multi-screen cinema complex in the world. It was opened by cinema pioneer

Jack Loeks John Loeks (family name formerly Loekis) (1918 – February 22, 2004) was an American movie theatre pioneer, born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Loeks opened the single screen Midtown Theatre in The downtown Grand Rapids, in 1944. Career Loeks opened ...

, and eventually became the flagship of Jack Loeks Theatres, Inc., a.k.a. Celebration Cinemas. It closed due to competition from other cineplexes in the metro area.

History

Studio 28 opened on Christmas Day 1965 with a single 1,000-seat theater. It expanded in 1967, adding a second screen dubbed the "Little Studio", which commonly showed features for children when the big screen was showing a feature for older audiences, or a film with a niche audience while the main screen showed a more commercial feature. The complex expanded to six screens in 1976, enabling it to accommodate extended runs of the popular

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s of the era, while still having screens for new releases. It expanded further to twelve screens in 1984, and to twenty in 1988. Loeks ultimately aspired to expand to a total of twenty-eight screens, to match the name of the complex (originally chosen for the street name). The complex broke a single day attendance record on November 29, 1990, serving 16,000 guests, a record which still remains unbroken. (''

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'' and ''

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'' were in their opening weeks at the time.) Loeks opened several other cinemas in other parts of the metro area, including Celebration Cinema! North and Celebration Cinema! South. The

Cinemark Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (stylized as CineMark from 1998 to 2022 and CINEMARK since 2022) is an American movie theater chain that started operations in 1984 and since then it has operated theaters with hundreds of locations throughout the America ...

chain built new complexes at nearby

RiverTown Crossings Mall RiverTown Crossings is a two-story enclosed super-regional shopping mall in Grandville, Michigan. It has four anchors: Macy's, Kohl's, JCPenney, and Dick's Sporting Goods with two vacant anchors last occupied by Younkers and Sears. History Desig ...

and

Woodland Mall Woodland Mall is an enclosed super-regional shopping mall located in Kentwood, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids. It comprises over 100 tenants in of retail space, with three anchor stores (Macy's, JCPenney, and Von Maur), along with Barnes & N ...

, which oversaturated the market (and would close several years later, re-opened by Loeks). Studio 28 saw a sharp decline in attendance, leading to its eventual closure on November 23, 2008. In March 2014, the building was demolished.

References

{{Coord, 42.91241, -85.69918, type:landmark_region:US-MI, display=title Cinemas and movie theaters in Michigan Former cinemas in the United States Theatres completed in 1965