Upscale Movieland is coming to North Richmond

With the scent of hot buttered popcorn in the air, city officials and officers from Manhattan-based theater development group Bow Tie Partners gathered at the former Richmond Locomotive and Machine Works building at the corner of Leigh Street and the Boulevard to officially unveil plans for Movieland at Boulevard Square, a multi-screen movie cinema and entertainment complex.

Scheduled for completion in early 2009, the 52,000-square-foot entertainment center will feature an upscale 17 screen, 2,850-seat cinema as well as 12,000 square feet of specialty retail space and a detached 6,000 square-foot restaurant. According to the developers, all 17 of the auditoriums will feature stadiums seating and custom designed wood and leather seats, which apparently are a signature feature of all Bow Tie Cinemas.

Besides the seating, the luxury extends to the concession stand, where in addition to real butter for the popcorn the theater will also offer a variety of coffees and teas and hot food offerings like pizza and fresh baked pretzels.

Though the new theater will offer many amenities not normally found in movie theaters, Bow Tie partner Ben Moss emphatically announced that the Richmond location will pointedly not offer two things commonly found at the movies these days.

“Movieland will have no video or arcade games anywhere in the facility, which is true of all Bow Tie Cinemas, and Movieland will have no onscreen advertising,” he said.

“The whole mission of Bow Tie Cinemas is to return style and elegance to the movie going experience and we think that video games are loud, noisy and somewhat antithetical to people having a stylish and elegant experience in our lobbies. The same goes for our auditoriums. We think that advertising is something that our customers didn’t bargain for when they bought their ticket. We think it is offensive and that it really interferes with the experience that we are trying to deliver.”