Newton man plans to build theater in Hillsboro Heights

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JULIE ANDERSON
Entertainment options in Hillsboro should increase by Christmas, given the announcement at the July 18 city council meeting that a Newton developer plans to build a movie theater in Hillsboro Heights.



Nicholas Navrat, Newton, purchased the 20,000-square-foot lot south of Country Haven Inn in Hillsboro Heights.



Navrat said he came across Hillsboro almost by accident.



“I was just reading a book on the history of Hillsboro and I got to wondering,” he said. “I had already decided I wanted to build a theater somewhere, and I started wondering if Hillsboro had a theater.”



In February or March, he drove to Hillsboro and explored the town. He also talked with Mayor Delores Dalke and Carol Wiebe, executive secretary of the Hillsboro Development Corporation.



“I started liking the town and I started talking to Delores and Carol Wiebe, and I started liking it more and more and it grew from there,” Navrat said.



Before deciding to build a theater in Hillsboro, Navrat walked around town taking surveys and talking to people about their interest in a theater. He received a positive reaction from everyone.



Navrat currently is the assistant manager of a theater.



“I have worked in one and I just wanted my own theater,” he said.



He said his experience has helped prepare him for this project. “You meet a lot of people in the industry and there are only so many things you have to know about the operation of a theater,” he said.



Navrat is opening the Hillsboro theater with financial help from a few other individuals. It will offer three screens. He plans to show first-run movies.



Navrat will close on the property Sept. 1 and plans to begin construction around that time. He hopes to have the theater open by Christmas.



The first theater in town was established by Jacob J. Entz, a local physician, on the main floor of the building he owned at 110 N. Main. The theater may have operated intermittingly from 1913 to 1918.



A second theater, called the Avon, was opened a few decades later in the building presently occupied by the Hillsboro Free Press. It closed in the early 1950s following a fire.

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