SEQUIM — The number of silver screens on the North Olympic Peninsula could almost double if an eight-screen movie-theater complex proposed on the eastern edge of Sequim premieres.
Sun Basin Theaters, the Wenatchee-based owner of the five-screen Deer Park Cinemas east of Port Angeles and the three-screen Lincoln Theater in downtown Port Angeles, submitted its preliminary plans for a new “cineplex” to Sequim city planners last week.
As proposed, the sprawling single-story theater complex would occupy 7.9 acres of vacant land bordered by East Washington Street and Rhodefer and West Sequim Bay roads, adjacent to the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce building.
At maximum capacity, it would seat 1,060 patrons and provide about 400 parking spaces, making it by far the largest film-going facility on the Olympic Peninsula.
In addition to the eight screens operated by Sun Basin in Clallam County, the historical Rose Theatre under separate owners in Port Townsend has two screens.
A drive-in theater operates south of Port Townsend operates during the summer.
Commercial property
The Sequim property is zoned for commercial retail use.
A pre-application conference on the proposal has been scheduled for Dec. 16 among Sequim planners and Sun Basin owner Phil Lassila’s architect and representative, William Lindberg of Lindberg and Smith Architects in Port Angeles.
Lindberg was on vacation and unavailable for comment, and Lassila, a part-time Peninsula resident who owns the pumpkin-patch-maze property near Carlsborg, could not be reached at his Indian Wells, Calif., home.
“This is by no means an approval process,” said Melinda Barlow, Sequim assistant city planner.
“It’s just them saying, ‘This is what we’d like to see.’
“It may turn out that it will work, and it may turn out that it won’t.”
But John Harsh, the Port Angeles-based film buyer for Sun Basin’s Deer Park Cinemas and Lincoln Theater, believes the time is right for more movie screens on the North Olympic Peninsula — and in Sequim in particular.
‘A logical place’
“It’s something we’d been looking at for a long time,” Harsh said Tuesday.
“A lot of it is based on the fact that Sequim is growing rapidly, and seems like a logical place because there is no theater there now.”
