Did You Know This Friendly Boise Tire Shop Was Once a Movie Theater?

There’s nothing particularly memorable about getting your tires replaced. You drop off your car, ask for the Wi-Fi password and make the waiting area your office for the next hour or so. Or at least that’s what I found myself doing after I had the misfortune of ending up with not one, but two big screws in my tire last weekend. 

The waiting area is close enough to the manager’s office that I couldn’t help but overhear all of his conversations. From what I gathered, one of the calls was a cold call from a roofing company hoping to make Gill’s Point S a new client. During that conversation, I heard the manager mention that they were one of the oldest Point S locations in the Boise area and that the building they use as their shop was originally a movie theater. 

READ MORE: 9 Downtown Boise Buildings with Fascinating Pasts That May Surprise You

Almost instinctively, I popped “716 Vista Ave Boise Movie Theater” into a Google search and wouldn’t you know it? I WAS sitting in someone’s childhood memory. My tire shop was once the Vista Theater!

Get our free mobile app

According to an old Idaho Statesman article, the Matthews brothers broke ground for the theater in January 1946 and it welcomed moviegoers for the first time on July 4 of the same year. The line to get in the theater stretched down the block. Cinema Treasures explains that the theater was the first theater built away from downtown and featured a soundproof, air-conditioned cry room where parents could take fussy kids during a movie. It was able to seat 423 movie lovers. 

Known for showing mostly G or PG rated movies that appealed to families, the theater survived 39 years. However, by the mid-1980s there were few family movies being produced by studios and there wasn’t much interest in the few that the theater was able to get. Because they had a reputation for being a family-friendly destination from the start, the owners who followed Matthews also shied away from rated R movies but the theater just wasn’t profitable anymore. It closed for good on October 27, 1985 after a screening of Cocoon. 

The Vista’s last owners sold it to Frank Bruneel, who turned it into a Bruneel Tire Auto Service Center in 1986. It’s the very same tire shop today, but the name recently changed as Bruneel’s son, who took over the family business, sold his stores to Gills Point S in 2024. 

After I mentioned that I overheard him say the building used to be a theater, Jon, the store’s manager asked if I wanted to see where the projectors used to be. That little room is really the only remaining sign that the building was once a theater. At the time that Bruneel bought the building, he estimated it would cost $100,000 to turn it into a tire shop.