Cinema’s final credits

By Shaun Inguanzo
GREATER Dandenong movie lovers will lose another major cinema complex with the pending closure of Village Cinemas at Waverley Gardens on Monday.
The major cinema chain will close the Police Road complex on Monday after about 20 years of operation.
While the complex is located in the City of Monash, it has been a preferred source of local entertainment for Noble Park and Dandenong North movie lovers for two decades.
Neither Village Cinemas nor the Mirvac Group, which owns Waverley Gardens, will comment on the details surrounding the closure.
Village Cinemas instead issued a press release citing ‘operating costs’ and the site location as the cause for it ending its lease early with the Mirvac Group.
It is the third Village Cinemas complex to close in the same number of years, with Cranbourne shutting its doors late in 2005, and Dandenong late last year.
The only big screen remaining in Greater Dandenong is the Lunar Drive-In in Dandenong South.
Noble Park North Ward councillor Maria Sampey, whose ward lines Police Road near Waverley Gardens, was shocked to hear of the cinema’s closure.
“That is really disappointing,” she said.
“Now we don’t have any (cinemas) in Dandenong or Waverley Gardens.
“I am starting to think ‘here we are, we’ve got the State Government spending $275 million in the next 10 years to revitalise Dandenong and what are they revitalising?”
Cr Sampey said the cinema’s closure would disadvantage residents who relied on its location as a source of entertainment for themselves and their children.
Springvale North Ward councillor Alan Gordon, a Noble Park resident, said he feared that young people who used the cinema as a social outlet would turn to the streets now there was no local cinema complex in or near to Greater Dandenong.
“There’s only Chadstone or Fountain Gate, meaning you’d have to either drive or get a bus to those places,” he said.
“If you take the kids to Chaddy it also costs more for food.”
Daryl Kee, retail manager at Waverley Gardens, said Mirvac planned to redevelop the cinema site into shops, to be open by mid-2008.