A 10-screen, $6 million movie theater is being planned on the West Plains by a group that includes prominent regional developers Dick Vandervert, Lowell McKee, and K. Duane Brelsford.

The planned, 33,000-square-foot complex, to be called Village Centre Cinemas Airway Heights, would be located at the southwest corner of U.S. 2 and Deer Heights Road, just east of the city of Airway Heights, says Brelsford, who is based in Pullman, Wash.

The project is in the permitting stage with Spokane County, Brelsford says, adding that he hopes construction will begin before year-end and be completed in about eight months, he says.

The project is being developed by M.V. Investments II LLC, which is headed by Vandervert and McKee, and the cinemas would be operated by Pullman-based Corporate Pointe Developers LLC, of which Brelsford is president. Corporate Pointe also operates Village Centre Cinemas Wandermere, which opened on Spokane's North Side in 2006 and was developed by the same group, as well as cinemas in Pullman and in Lewiston, Idaho.

Breslford says the West Plains complex would have 40 to 50 employees.

The Airway Heights cinemas would be located north of the Deer Creek Apartments complex and near the planned 79-unit La Quinta Inn & Suites, which would be on the east side of Deer Heights Road. All of those properties are south of U.S. 2 and east of Hayford Road.

A contactor for the project hasn't been chosen yet, although two companies have been asked to bid on the project, Brelsford says. Design West Architects PA, of Pullman, designed it.

The design is similar to that of the 14-screen Village Centre Cinemas Wandermere, which has exterior features including stacked rock and big wooden beams, Brelsford says. The West Plains complex's individual theaters would range in size from 125 to 225 seats, he says.

Plans for the facility include state-of-the-art sound systems and some digital-projection systems, in which a movie would be downloaded from a cartridge into a computer-driven projector, rather than loaded onto a conventional film projector, Brelsford says.

The cinemas would feature first-run movies, and tickets would be priced at market rates, he says. He expects the project would serve residents of Cheney and Medical Lake, as well as Airway Heights and West Spokane.