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

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

, 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, 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

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chain built new complexes at nearby RiverTown Crossings Mall and Woodland Mall, 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