Never mind the plexes, venue pours on luxe life

By Anne Marie Distefano

The Portland Tribune, Aug 26, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

It doesn’t happen that often, maybe. But say you have a date you really want to surprise and impress. You brush your teeth and pick up your date in your car.

“Where are we going?” your date asks.

“You’ll see,” you say, cryptically, enticingly, as you merge onto I-84.

You drive for a while. As you turn onto I-205, your date asks again, “No, really, where are we going?”

Again you reply, slyly, mysteriously, “You’ll see.”

You cross into Washington, and turn off on Mill Plain Boulevard. By this time, your date is asking more nervously, “Where are you taking me?”

And then it appears before you: Cinetopia.

Cinetopia is many things. As the name suggests, it’s meant to be a paradise for movie lovers. It’s also a restaurant. And a wine bar. And an art gallery. And a very big, very risky, investment for its owners.

To build an independent, first-run, eight-screen movie theater on the outskirts of Vancouver, in these days of declining box office receipts, is chancy enough.

But Cinetopia exudes expense. The place is loaded with unheard-of amenities such as leatherlike upholstery, live pre-show music and wait staff for the auditoriums.

Surrounded by Taco Bells and Kentucky Fried Chickens, that profligacy may be foolhardy, or it may turn out to be a successful lure.

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