"I truly envision this as the Harbour Town of Bluffton," said Cemek Properties president Lori Kaylor, who unveiled the project alongside Bluffton town officials at a news conference at Town Hall.

Construction on the 60-acre development is slated to begin early next year. Plans have the 2,300-seat theater opening by Nov. 1, 2004.

The $10 million independent cinema will have stadium seating, stereo sound, wireless capabilities and room for other uses, such as conferences, said developers and designers.

The 12 auditoriums are slated to range in size from 376 seats to 114 seats, with Hollywood blockbusters filling the large screens and independent art films playing on the smaller ones. The site will have room to add two additional screens, developers said.

The theater budget, developers said, will include money for two full-time security officers.

The entire project has an estimated price tag of about $25 million and will be split into two parcels that line the west side of Buckwalter Parkway near the U.S. 278 intersection.

The 45,000-square-foot theater will be part of a 25-acre parcel, according to plans. The cinema's entrance is designed to open into an outdoor courtyard filled with fountains, benches and music. Outdoor restaurants and a "big box" retailer also are slated to fill part of the 25 acres.

Plans call for a separate 35-acre parcel to be developed near the theater complex. It will include 280,000 square feet of retail designed to be anchored by a grocery store.

Kaylor said no retail lease agreements have been finalized. But, she said, negotiations are ongoing. The wish list, Kaylor said, includes pizza restaurants, ice cream shops and bookstores.

A 900-space parking lot is slated to serve the development and new roads and walking paths could be built to connect it to the many residential developments that line Buckwalter Parkway, according to developers and town officials.

"We're not making any small plans here ... This will be the Yellow Brick Road; this will be the Emerald City," said Town Manager Bruce Behrens, who spoke at Thursday's news conference.

The $10 million cost for the theater already has been raised through bank financing and investor capital, Kaylor said.

Kaylor, who has been working to bring a theater to greater Bluffton for more than a year, is the project's principal investor, along with Angelo Carrabba, owner of Hilton Head Island-based home building company Platinum Building Corp.

They have hired local architecture and planning firm KRA to design the project. The company's owners, Daniel Ogden and Michael Kronimus, have experience designing some 400 theaters across the country, Kronimus said.

The project's developers purchased the 60-acre site from Tom Zinn, John Reed and Gary Rowe, the local partnership that owns the 300-acre Buckwalter Commons.