Enter Studio Park, the 62,500-square-foot mixed-use development project designed with a brand new Celebration Cinema at its core.Īccording to Emily Loeks, granddaughter of Jack Loeks, Director of Community Affairs at Celebration Cinema and also board member of a variety of local organizations including the Grand Rapids Community Foundation and Local First, the Loeks family was approached by three sitting GR mayors to return to downtown and build a new theatre. “Remembered for running The Sound of Music for over a year in the mid-1960's, the theater closed Wednesday, September 20, 1972.” In the decades that followed, the Loeks family focused on expansion throughout west and central Michigan that eventually saw the construction of Celebration Cinema North on Knapp and the East Beltline.īut with the focus on downtown living steadily shifting, the need for a movie theatre downtown made itself known once again. The seating capacity was given in various places as 1,000, 1,200, and 1,700…and the interior was nearly six stories in height. According to, a site run by the Grand Rapids Historical Commission: “It was noted for its perfect acoustics. From 1948 to 1972, freed from this monopoly, the newly named Midtown Theatre was downtown GR’s destination for cinephiles.

Showing only wartime news reels due to a monopoly on film distribution, Loeks took part in a lawsuit that rendered this practice illegal by the Supreme Court in 1948. In 1944, Jack Loeks opened the Foto News Theatre at 123 Pearl St. And though we have plenty of entertainment in the form of niche eateries, breweries, live music and theatre, and more art events than you can shake a stick at, one form has been decidedly sparse downtown (aside from UICA and Wealthy Theatre) since the early 1970s: the movie theatre. In the past 20 years, Grand Rapids has made a habit of creating new or rehabbing old venues to account for economic growth, evolving trends, and changing interest.

Cinema studio park