New businesses opening in Founders Row 1 in the past year have led to a surprising outcome. The interior plaza of Mill Creek’s four-acre project at the corner of N. West and W. Broad Street has evolved quickly into a mini-town center surrounded by major elements of a colorful urban life led by top-drawer restaurants, luxury apartments and other retailers.

But if it casts that kind of ambiance now, well, as the saying goes, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

Enter the Paragon Entertainment Holdings, Inc., with their seven-screen motion picture complex that is building out the space, deceptive now because most of it is out of the public view on the second floor, now scheduled to open in May.

With over 600 seats facing seven screens, 30 percent of which are what they call “Lux Boxes,” or the “Paragon Theaters VIP Lux Box Dine-In Seating sections.”

These sections are described as “private enclaves of seats with their own stairwells of access that feature the best viewing experience in every theater, including Paragon’s exclusive large format screens, known as Axis 15 Extreme.”

In this section of each auditorium, “each VIP luxury seat electronically reclines with a ‘zero-gravity’ ergonomic mechanism featuring privacy wings, including individual retractable tray tables and adjustable heating. The seating is configured in loveseats or single seats, and utilizing a QR code to get concessions, meals or drinks served directly to an individual location.”

There will be no concession stand on the ground floor, as per the usual, but a bar on the ground floor that will be open to the public serving craft cocktails and food, namely American cuisine with local flairs, with hand-made pizzas with six or eight varieties being among the most popular.

Paragon’s Jared Comess set out what customers will be able to expect at this new venue in an interview with the News-Press last week.

For example, the Axis 15 Extreme large format screens have been designed to better reduce eye strain and increase viewability titled 15 degrees to an optimal way for guests to see a film, especially as they recline in luxury leather reclining seats to the best possible position.

“Couple the new tilted screens with 4K laser projection and the ultimate in sound technology, Dolby Atmos, exclusive to selected auditoriums, and the movie going public will never be the same again,” Comess said.

Paragon Theaters are currently located in Florida (three of them) and North Carolina (one in Raleigh) and all are screening first-run blockbusters.

The organization is now previewing its Founders Row location on its website, saying it “will have all the same luxury amenities that are associated with all the other Paragon theaters.”

Starting in March, the company will begin hiring to staff its Founders Row screens, looking to employ 40 to 60 people.

Come May, the company plans a ribbon cutting ceremony, a “big shebang,” Comess said, with a big film opening to accompany it.

The Falls Church City Council gave the green light to Mill Creek’s Founders Row project, years in the making, on financial estimates based on the projection that there would be an average of over 300 customers to the movie complex nightly.

So, as this comes to pass, it will mark the latest among what is already becoming one of little Falls Church’s three urban downtowns (the Hoffman company’s massive 10-acre West End under construction now, the traditional Broad and Washington intersection, and now Founders Row).