It was 20 years ago that Duluth Entertainment Convention Center officials announced plans to build an eight-screen movie theater next to the DECC’s Omnimax theater. Within a few weeks the plan expanded to 10 screens and had the name Canal Park 10. When it opened on Dec. 22, 2004, it bore the name Duluth 10 and was operated by Cinema Entertainment Corp.

Marcus Theatres acquired CEC’s Duluth-area movie theaters in 2007 and eventually Duluth 10 became known as Marcus Duluth Cinema. The Duluth Omnimax closed in 2011 and in 2012 Marcus took it over and converted it to an UltraScreen movie theater.

Today Marcus Duluth Cinema features 11 screens, one of which is the the former Omnimax three-story tall screen with 7.1 surround sound.

Bob Hom, the DECC’s director of operations who comments on the video, retired in 2011.

Fun tidbit: The land where the DECC is built was previously a scrapyard. During site preparation for the movie theater construction in 2004, three old mortar shells were found and carefully detonated. The dates of the shell discoveries were June 25, July 6 and July 12, the latter being just before President George W. Bush made a campaign stop at the DECC.

Two of the shells were 60-milimeter mortar rounds. The July 6 find was an 81-milimeter shell. All were believed to date back to World War II or the Korean War era.