In Plymouth, This Fall's Biggest Openings Are Actually Comebacks

Drive past the Plymouth Grand 15 on Vicksburg Lane right now and you will see scaffolding where the XDX auditorium used to be. Four weeks of construction, started in late August, is turning that screen into Minnesota's sixth IMAX auditorium. A few miles away on Highway 55, Latuff's Pizzeria spent the summer running two kitchens under one roof, serving Dutch pancakes in the morning and thin-crust pizza at night. Neither of these is a new business moving to town. Both are Plymouth institutions that have been here for decades, betting that the way to stay relevant is to bring back something the market already proved people wanted.

That is the through-line worth noticing this fall. Plymouth is not filling its storefronts with unfamiliar names. It is watching two of its oldest operators reinvest in themselves at a scale neither has attempted before.

The Screen Nobody Was Asking For

Mann Theatres has run the Plymouth Grand 15 since 1998, one of eight locations the family-owned chain operates across Minnesota, from Baxter and Grand Rapids to Hibbing and two spots in St. Paul. Founded in 1935 and now run by its third generation, Mann has never installed an IMAX screen at any of them. That changes October 2, when the new auditorium opens with Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Digger," starring Tom Cruise.

Co-owner Michelle Mann described the calculation behind the project simply. "This is a $2 million investment for one screen," she said. That is the cost for a single auditorium, not a chain-wide upgrade, and it makes this the most expensive single-screen bet in the company's history. The new IMAX with Laser setup will run close to 55 feet wide and 30 feet tall, and Mann's existing XDX screen is not disappearing. It is relocating to another auditorium in the building with upgrades of its own.

What makes the investment more than a hardware swap is the fine print attached to it. IMAX contracts carry a 10-mile radius exclusivity, meaning no other theater can install an IMAX screen within 10 miles of Plymouth Grand 15. Before this, moviegoers in the northwest suburbs had to drive to AMC Eden Prairie, AMC Rosedale, AMC Southdale, or Emagine's Lakeville location for the format. Plymouth becomes the only stop.

"Instead of being reactive, we want to be proactive," Mann said, framing the project as an answer to what audiences are already choosing. The bet lines up with a broader trend in the industry: IMAX has told exhibitors that dozens of upcoming titles are being shot specifically for its format, and "Digger" itself was filmed entirely in VistaVision for exactly this kind of screen. Mann is also rolling out a new website and loyalty program this fall, a smaller signal of the same instinct to hold onto regulars rather than chase new ones.

For anyone who has been driving to Eden Prairie for the big-format releases, that commute ends in two weeks.

A Recipe Coming Back From the Dead

The other comeback story sits nine miles south, inside a restaurant that has never needed a gimmick to stay full. Latuff's Pizzeria opened in 1971 and has been a fixture on Highway 55 for more than half a century, known for thin-crust pizza, fried chicken, and a dining room that regulars treat like a second kitchen table. In 2024, the Latuff family sold the restaurant to Wong Nystrom, who grew up around Twin Cities restaurants his mother owned, including one that briefly occupied the same building Latuff's now calls home.

Nystrom started thinking about breakfast almost immediately after buying the place, but he did not want to compete with the Original Pancake House nearby by running a generic morning menu. The answer arrived when Pannekoeken Huis, a Dutch pancake chain that had served St. Louis Park for 25 years, lost its lease and closed. Nystrom bought the rights to the name and recipes and brought in Derek Moberg, the former owner, to run breakfast service inside Latuff's.

"Why bring just another American breakfast place, without it being special?" Nystrom asked.

Making that work meant building a roughly 1,000-square-foot kitchen addition just for breakfast equipment, and gradually refreshing the dining room with new booths and brighter walls while staying open through construction. Daily service started in June, and the restaurant held its formal grand opening in mid-July, reuniting much of Pannekoeken's original St. Louis Park staff with Latuff's veteran crew.

"We call it breakfast by day, pizza by night," Nystrom said.

The two menus overlap for a few hours each midday, so a table can order lasagna and Dutch pancakes at the same sitting. Customers who missed the St. Louis Park location have noticed. "I'm a big breakfast person, so I love that there's another option in the area for that," said Jenna Geier, a regular who drives in from New Hope.

What stands out is not that Plymouth got a new breakfast spot. It is that a restaurant with 52 years of equity in one identity chose to absorb a competitor's failure rather than simply outlast it.

Same Bet, Different Aisle

Line these two stories up and the pattern gets sharper. Mann Theatres did not open a new theater to capture IMAX demand. It rebuilt inside a location it has run for nearly 30 years. Latuff's did not launch a breakfast concept from scratch. It bought a dead brand's name and rebuilt around it. Both businesses looked at something the market had already tested, either through moviegoers driving out of town for a format or through 25 years of loyal Pannekoeken customers left without a location, and decided the safest growth move was to absorb proven demand rather than invent new demand.

That is a different kind of local investment than a new restaurant chain opening a Plymouth location or a developer breaking ground on a strip mall. It says something about how the city's older, family-run businesses are choosing to compete: not by chasing what is trendy, but by picking up what already worked somewhere else and giving it a second life here.

Closing Out the Season at Hilde

The same instinct showed up one more time this month, at a lower dollar figure but with a longer track record. On September 19, the Hilde Performance Center hosted the fifth annual Rhythm & Brews festival, an unlimited-pour beer and seltzer event that started at CHS Field in downtown St. Paul in 2023 and 2024 before organizers relocated it to Plymouth in 2025. The festival has stayed here since, doubling as the stage for Minnesota Monthly's Best of Beer competition.

Hilde itself has become the kind of venue that makes an event worth relocating for. Its open-air bandshell rises 45 feet and was designed by the same architectural team behind Minneapolis's Lake Harriet Band Shell, with a glass rear wall that frames the wetlands behind the stage. The city leaned further into that potential this year with Hilde Amplified, a new multi-day ticketed series that brought in national acts including Third Eye Blind and Brett Young. If you want a sense of how much that stage has come to anchor Plymouth's calendar, our earlier look at late summer in Plymouth traced how the venue and the Northwest Greenway both became finished, functioning pieces of the city this year.

Three fall dates worth keeping straight if you live here:

• September 19: Rhythm & Brews at Hilde Performance Center, its fifth year in Plymouth
• Late September: Mann Theatres launches its new website and loyalty program
• October 2: The new IMAX auditorium opens at Plymouth Grand 15 with "Digger"

None of these are new arrivals. All three are established Plymouth fixtures doubling down on what already works, whether that is a festival that outgrew a St. Paul ballpark or a family theater chain willing to spend $2 million on a single screen.

What This Says About the City

A suburb's character often shows up less in what opens and more in what gets reinvested in. Plymouth's oldest operators are not being pushed out by newer competitors. They are the ones making the biggest bets on their own future, whether that means a theater chain protecting a 10-mile radius around Vicksburg Lane or a pizzeria absorbing a beloved brand's second chance. If you want a fuller sense of what daily life looks like across Plymouth's neighborhoods, from Parkers Lake to the areas near the city's Northwest Greenway, that pattern of steady reinvestment is worth watching alongside the calendar.

If you are thinking about what it would mean to call one of these neighborhoods home, Ulrich Real Estate Group can walk you through what makes each part of Plymouth distinct. Start Your Home Search whenever you are ready.