Plaza Cinema in Healdsburg to start construction this year

Plans for a new movie theater in Healdsburg took an important step this week toward an opening next year.

“Tuesday night we received unanimous approval from the Healdsburg Planning Commission of our conditional-use application,” said Kathryn Hecht, executive director of AVFilm.

“We’re hoping to start construction by the end of the year, and we’re hoping to open in 2024,” Hecht said.

Last October, AVFilm, which founded the Alexander Valley Film Festival in 2015, announced hopes to open a three-screen movie theater, to be called the Plaza Cinema Center, in downtown Healdsburg.

In the first stage of fundraising for the project, AVFilm raised $1.5 million in 10 months, Hecht said. She declined to specify the project’s ultimate fundraising goal because AVFilm is still engaged in the bidding process with prospective contractors.

“Everybody is excited. We have been developing this project for about three years,” Hecht said.

Healdsburg hasn’t had a movie theater since the closure of the Raven Film Center in 2020.

Plans for the Plaza Cinema Center call for three movie auditoriums on the first floor with seating ranging from 23 to 54 seats, plus a classroom, offices and meeting spaces on the second floor.

The theater will be located on a courtyard accessible by an archway in the middle of the 300 block of Healdsburg Avenue. Behind it is the large parking lot where the Healdsburg Farmers Market is held.

“Plaza Cinema Center will return movies to Healdsburg with a ground-floor, state-of-the-art, three-screen cinema offering a hybrid of Hollywood and independent fare,” Hecht said.

“In addition, the center will feature a second-floor educational studio, providing a home base for AVFilm’s film and media arts educational programming, as well as expanded opportunities for students of all ages,” she added. “We see the center as an asset for northern Sonoma County and the hub of our work that spans the broader region.”

Over the past eight years, the annual Alexander Valley Film Festival, now called AVFest, has expanded from Cloverdale to include Healdsburg, Geyserville, Windsor and Santa Rosa.

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5243. On Twitter @danarts.