MILLCREEK, Utah — Recently, 103.5 The Arrow’s Jon Smith was let into Adib’s Rug Gallery, previously known as The Villa, to check out the contents of the gallery, talk about its history and meander around the areas that are not available for the public to access.
As many people might already know, Adib’s was a movie theatre before it was turned into a rug gallery but it was one of those theaters with just one giant screen.
As Jon indicates in this episode of Cool Stuff in Utah, the thing that The Villa just couldn’t keep up with was the Megaplex which eventually led to the theatre losing more business and thus falling into disrepair.
The last film shown in The Villa Theater was Lord of The Rings: Two Towers before it was shut down in 2003.
The building was preserved by Dr. Hamid Adib who bought the building in 2004 for $2.4 million and put twice that amount into preserving the building and updating it to fit safety standards.
Dr. Adib, a preservationist, went so far as to preserve the very neon lights that were in the ceiling of the theater. The theatre’s neon is covered up by the facility’s current ornamentation but remains intact and usable if at any point in time should there be a need to do so.
Adib’s Rug Gallery remains open for people shopping for rugs or to just come and reminisce about the old times spent watching movies at the theater.
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