Arboretum Snags Gold Class Cinemas as Tenant

SOUTH BARRINGTON, IL-Village Roadshow Gold Class Cinemas has signed a 15-year lease at the Arboretum of South Barrington, a 600,000-sf lifestyle center at the intersection of Illinois Routes 59 and 72. The cinema will lease about 40,000 sf and will have eight screens, says Michael Jaffe, president of Northbrook, IL-based Jaffe Cos., which is developing the lifestyle center. Rreef will be a capital partner for the $200 million project being constructed on an 86-acre site.

Gold Class Cinemas is “redefining the movie experience particularly for adults and affluent families,” Jaffe says. “It is really a shift” from movie theaters that are “targeted primarily at teenagers,” he says. Each screen will have 40 reclining seats and will have valet service and food brought to patrons during the movie. The theater also has a full-service bar and lounge “rather than a lobby with popcorn,” he says. There are currently Gold Class Cinemas locations in Australia, Singapore and Greece with no locations currently open in the United States. The South Barrington location may be the first one to open in the US when the lifestyle center opens in the fall of 2008, Jaffe says.