Walk into the lobby at 200 C Street this month and the first thing you'll notice isn't the popcorn smell. It's the new signage over Auditorium Two, the one announcing Petaluma's first IMAX screen, installed in a building that has been showing movies downtown since 2005. The second thing you'll notice, if you've lived here long enough to remember what used to be at the Kohl's site, is that this theater has now outlasted and outgrown every threat that has taken down its neighbors.
Here's the part most visitors to Boulevard Cinemas don't know, and most longtime Petalumans have never had reason to ask: this is the only movie theater in town, and it just spent money most single-screen operators wouldn't dream of spending on a market this size. While theaters in San Rafael, Rohnert Park, and Santa Rosa have shut their doors over the past two decades, Petaluma's downtown multiplex added ScreenX in December 2025 and true IMAX in May 2026. That's not a coincidence. It's a bet, made by someone with a very specific reason to believe it would pay off.
The Theater That Didn't Close
The North Bay's movie theater map has been thinning out for years. Screens in San Rafael, Rohnert Park, and Santa Rosa have gone dark one by one, victims of the same streaming-and-attendance pressures that have hit theaters nationwide. Petaluma's Boulevard Cinemas is the one that didn't just survive that stretch. It expanded into it.
The timeline matters here. Auditorium One got ScreenX, a format that spreads part of the picture onto the side walls for an immersive effect especially suited to animated and CGI-heavy films, as an upgrade completed in December 2025. Auditorium Two got IMAX five months later, debuting on May 22, 2026 with the release of "Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu," a film specially reformatted for IMAX screens. Marketing director Emery O'Leary has said the upgrades came in direct response to what local customers were asking for, which is a different story than a corporate chain deciding a market needs premium seating to hit a revenue target. This was a theater listening to the town it already serves, not trying to win over a new one.
Who's Actually Running the Projector
The reason Boulevard Cinemas behaves like a local business instead of a mall chain outpost is that it is one. The theater is owned and operated by CinemaWest, a company headquartered right here in Petaluma. CinemaWest was founded by Dave Corkill, a lifelong Petaluma resident who got his start in the movie theater business in 1984 with a single-screen theater in Cloverdale. Decades later, Corkill's company now owns 18 other theaters across California and Idaho, and it was CinemaWest that stepped in to build Boulevard Cinemas in 2005, four years after Pacific Cinemas closed at the site where Kohl's now stands.
That ownership structure explains a lot about why this theater keeps making decisions that look conservative on a spreadsheet and obvious in hindsight. A regional chain answering to shareholders in another state doesn't have the same incentive to protect a hometown theater's reputation that a founder who still lives in the county does. When Boulevard Cinemas added recliner seating years ago, or beer and wine at concessions, or now IMAX and ScreenX, it was a company with its headquarters a few miles from the theater deciding what its own neighbors wanted next.
The Short List Petaluma Just Joined
Here's the detail that even regular moviegoers tend to miss: not every theater that markets itself as "IMAX" is actually IMAX in the way the format was designed. The certification that matters, sometimes called "true" or "GT" (Grand Theatre) IMAX, requires a specific screen size, projection system, and sound setup that most multiplex-branded IMAX screens don't meet. Before Boulevard Cinemas added its screen in May 2026, the only two locations in the entire Bay Area offering that certified experience were the AMC Metreon 16 in San Francisco and the Regal Hacienda Crossings in Dublin.
Petaluma, a city of roughly 60,000 people, now has a seat at that table. That's not a small thing for a downtown that competes for attention against San Francisco and the wine country tourist circuit. It means a resident who wants the full IMAX experience, the towering screen and the sound system built to match it, no longer has to drive to the city or across the bridge. They can walk to C Street.
What a Friday Night Actually Costs Now
The upgrades come with a real price difference, and it's worth knowing before you buy tickets expecting standard-theater rates. Both the IMAX and ScreenX auditoriums at Boulevard Cinemas charge $21 for adults and $20.50 for seniors and children 12 and under, a premium over standard screenings that reflects the cost of running the format properly rather than just slapping a logo on an existing room.
For context, the theater's two premium auditoriums serve different purposes:
- Auditorium One (ScreenX): added December 2025, best suited to visually dense, animated, or effects-heavy films where the wraparound side-wall imagery adds something a flat screen can't.
- Auditorium Two (IMAX): added May 22, 2026, the format built around scale and sound rather than side-wall tricks, best for the kind of summer blockbuster that's meant to be loud.
Boulevard Cinemas sits inside what locals call the Theatre District, a stretch of C Street and the surrounding blocks that also holds a boutique hair salon, a barber shop, and studio fitness spaces within a short walk. The concession counter still sells local Three Twins ice cream alongside the usual popcorn and candy, and a parking garage a half block away offers free parking that beats hunting for street spots with a two-hour limit. None of that changed with the upgrades. What changed is that a Friday night at the movies in Petaluma now includes an option that, six months ago, would have meant a drive to San Francisco or Dublin.
The Actual Story Here
It would be easy to write this up as just another local business news item, a theater added some equipment, ticket prices went up a few dollars. But the more interesting fact is what the upgrade says about how a single, locally owned theater can outlast a wave of closures that took down chains with more screens and deeper pockets. Boulevard Cinemas isn't fighting to stay relevant. It's the rare case of a hometown business getting to invest from a position of strength, backed by an owner who started with one screen in Cloverdale over forty years ago and never stopped believing a small city's downtown theater was worth protecting.
That's the kind of detail that doesn't show up on a chain's earnings call, but it shows up in a Petaluma resident's calendar every time they decide where to spend a Friday night. The next time you're at the theater, look up at that new IMAX screen in Auditorium Two. It's there because someone who has lived here for decades decided this town was worth the investment, at a time when plenty of others in the region weren't willing to make the same bet.
If you're weighing a move to a neighborhood where local businesses tend to double down instead of pull out, Jen Birmingham can walk you through what makes Petaluma's pockets different, block by block. Request a free home valuation and seller consultation to start the conversation.
