This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Between now and fall, Thanksgiving Point's movie theater will go from being the smallest to one of the largest — and most modern — of the Larry H. Miller Group's theaters.
The Miller group is quadrupling the size of the Megaplex 8 Theatre in Lehi, adding nine screens and a food court. The expansion will put it on par with Jordan Commons theater.
The former Stadium 8 Theatre is being upgraded to include a system that will allow deaf patrons to follow movie dialogue.
"Overall, the Megaplex theaters are known for innovation," said Jeff Whipple, the theater group's marketing director.
Whipple said Thanksgiving Point and the new theater in Centerville will have state-of-the-art technology.
The Miller group took over the Stadium 8 five years ago, leasing the building from Thanksgiving Point. Whipple said with population growth in northern Utah County and southern Salt Lake County, it was time to overhaul the theater and bring it in line with the rest of the group's outlets.
The original plan called for financing the project with federal stimulus funds. The Utah County Commission voted in November to provide $15 million in low-interest federal stimulus bonds to finance the contract.
Under the plan, the county would serve as a conduit and would not have any financial obligation for the projects or the bonds.
But Erica Brown, Thanksgiving Point's marketing director, said the company decided to go another route and did not take the federal funding.
The project will put in nine additional screens and make the original eight theaters fully digital. It will boost the building's footprint from 27,000 square feet to 113,000 square feet.
He said the theater will be outfitted to show 3-D movies.
Whipple said the biggest challenge was the fact that the building was not originally built to Miller's Megaplex standards.
"Some level of remodeling went into upgrading the seats and the screens," Whipple said.
Some of the seats in the theater will be the D-Box synchronized motion seats, which will move along with the action on screen. Whipple said patrons can set the sensitivity of the chair's movements, or if they're nervous, they can try one out in the lobby before going in.
The theaters are being outfitted with the Rear Window Captioning Descriptive Service for deaf patrons. The system projects the text of the on-screen dialogue on the back wall of the theater, and the patron uses a device similar to a rear-view mirror to read the text while watching the film in the same way he or she would closed-captioning on TV.
The theaters will be available for business meetings, accommodating up to 4,000 people.
But the movie theaters are not the only part of the Megaplex that is being upgraded. The theater will have a food court, a signature of the Miller group, offering more options than buckets of butter-flavored popcorn and candy. There will be drive-up ticket-purchase kiosks.
Brown said the upgrade is welcome. It will help bring more people to Thanksgiving Point, especially those looking for a place with restaurants within walking distance of the theater, she said.
She said some people have been known to follow a theme, visiting the Museum of Natural History after taking in a dinosaur-themed movie at the theater.
Brown said Thanksgiving Point already shows 3-D movies at the Museum's Mammoth Screen, and the upgrades at the Megaplex will mean more options for theatergoers.
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