Rejoice, my fellow Brantfordians...Brantfordonians...Brantforders...Brantfordites?
Well, whatever we are, we have ourselves a new downtown movie theatre. Hyland Cinema, which owns one location in London, has announced that they're going to take up the vacant Rainbow moviehouse (I'm running out of synonyms here), and show second-run box office hits along with major independent movies. In other words, more or less exactly what we got at Rainbow, maybe slightly better. That's good, by the way.
The other positive to come out of this is that I have yet to see or hear anybody talking about how the new cinema will "finally revitalize Market Square" - and don't kid yourself, it won't. In the entire time I've been in Brantford, the perception of Market Square has gone from "that sketchy mall with Rainbow" to "that sketchy mall with a Williams opening soon" to "that sketchy mall with a Williams nicely placed so that you don't actually have to see the rest of the mall from there". Now it's going to be "that sketchy mall with a Williams and a theatre".
No one business by itself will revitalize Market Square. That said, if the mall management could somehow convince a number of retailers, both chains and independents, to set up shop more or less at the same time, there's a chance it could be restored to its former glory.
--Ryan
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