…Feb. 21 after 51 years. It was the first shopping-mall cinema in the U.S. Its design “modernized” and toned down the old prewar movie-palace look, but still emphasized going to the movies as a special experience, with a huge screen and other amenities intended to emphasize the differences between cinema and TV. With over 1,000 seats, it had become Seattle’s largest remaining single-screen movie house by its end. It was finally done in by multiplex competition, long-planned redevelopment plans at the mall, and by the bankruptcy-forced retrenchment plan of its current operator, Loews Cineplex (formerly Cineplex Odeon). The chain had let the Northgate lapse into decay for over a decade; many seats were broken, the carpets had been ripped out, the interior walls had stains and holes. But at its peak, as a flagship of the locally-based Sterling Recreation Organization circuit, it housed the local-exclusive first runs of many blockbusters, and gave many lonely suburban kids a glimpse of life’s more glamorous possibilities.