22-Screen Multiplex to Be Built at Huntington Center

Edwards Theatres Circuit said Tuesday that it will build a 22-screen, 5,000-seat cinema complex at Huntington Center as part of a make-over of the struggling Huntington Beach mall that will focus on entertainment and restaurants.

At 92,000 square feet, the theaters will constitute one of the larger complexes built by Newport Beach-based Edwards, which now operates 85 cinemas with more than 500 screens. Edwards, Orange County’s dominant movie theater chain, is probably best-known for a 158,000-square-foot, 21-screen complex at Irvine Spectrum that includes a giant-screen Imax theater.

The 30-year-old Huntington Center, one of the first covered malls in California, has been struggling for years. The Edwards complex will be built in space once occupied by a Broadway department store that closed last year.

David Biggs, Huntington Beach’s director of economic development, said the theaters will generate perhaps $50,000 in annual sales tax for the city, compared with more than $200,000 by the Broadway. He said, though, that mall owner Macerich Co. is expected to announce other retailing and restaurant additions soon.

“It’s the first step for the mall being repositioned as a genuine regional attraction,” he said of the cinema complex. “It’s not a department store, but it’s still an anchor that will attract people.”

Edwards President W. James Edwards III said the ample parking, visibility from the San Diego Freeway and 1.7 million generally affluent residents within 10 miles make Huntington Center unusually attractive as a retail site.

The mall was acquired from a group of pension funds last year by Macerich, a Santa Monica real estate investment trust with interests in 23 regional malls, 13 of them in California.

Arthur Coppola, Macerich’s chief executive, said the theater complex will add momentum to a leisure-oriented transformation at the mall that includes the addition of a Barnes & Noble superstore and Romano’s Macaroni Grill.