By Karen Welch — Senior Content Producer
Cinemark Hollywood 16 appears to be preparing to compete – at least on some level – with the flashier $25-million entertainment complex to be built in southwest Amarillo.
Cinemark subsidiary CNMK Texas Properties, a limited liability company that does business as Cinemark Hollywood 16, has initiated the process to obtain a wine and beer retail permit and late-hours alcohol sales license, according to Lorena Barnett, a license and permit specialist with the Amarillo office of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
The company has several steps to complete before the licenses can be approved, Barnett said.
Those steps include getting Randall County Clerk’s office to verify that the theater on the Interstate 27 sits in a legal ‘wet’ zone, where alcohol sales are allowed by county law.
A representative of the company has contacted the county to say its application documents are en route, Randall County Clerk Renee Calhoun said. And, yes, the theater is in a wet precinct.
Cinemark didn’t immediately return a phone call for comment about the company’s plans.
A wine and beer retailer’s permit authorizes the holder to sell beer, ale, malt liquor and wine for both on- and off-premises consumption. The late-hours license allows the permit holder to sell and serve beer and wine between the hours of 1 and 2 a.m. on Sunday and between midnight and 2 a.m. on any other day, the TABC website said.
The Cinemark Theater has been operating since 1998. It opened as a Starplex Hollywood 16 in February of that year and was purchased by Cinemark a month later, according to media reports at the time. Building permits then placed the construction cost at roughly $10.5 million.
Last fall, the Amarillo City Council approved a partial sales tax rebate as an economic incentive to lure the $25-million, 90,000-square-foot entertainment complex that developer Cinergy Entertainment Group has planned for the Town Square development on the west side of Soncy Road/Loop 335 at Hillside Road.
Set to open in the fall of 2017, it will include 10 dine-in theaters, bowling lanes, an arcade, a ropes course, laser tag, and bar and restaurant facilities.
* Karen Welch is a senior content producer for Panhandle PBS. She can be contacted at Karen.Welch@actx.edu, at @KWelch806 on Twitter and at www.facebook.com/karensmithwelch on Facebook.
