BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – A local independent theater has set an opening date for its long-awaited expansion.

The Pickford Film Center announced on Wednesday, May 28 that its new location on Grand Street will open on Aug. 1.

The new spot, called the Pickford on Grand, will bring three additional screens on top of the two already offered at Pickford’s current location.

Pickford spokesperson Gray Gordon says the expansion will help expose more movie goers to a wider range of titles.

“It’s going to mean that we can play small films that might play on our screens now for just a week, and that’s if we play it at all,” Gordon said. “Now it has breathing room.”

Pickford announced plans for its new location in 2021 and continued to fundraise while construction was underway.

Gordon says the smallest of the three new theaters, called “the jewel box,” will give Pickford more flexibility to show what it wants.

“That’ll be a great place for small, first-run films that maybe don’t have a big enough audience to incentivize us to open them exclusively on one of our screens,” Gordon said. “Now we’ll be able to play those in the future with this smaller screen as well as do more educational programming.”

Details on the opening day festivities will be announced at a later date.