Owning an ornate home theater designed in the style of a 1920s movie palace—with knockout modern technology—is enough for some people, but not for the owner of a $15-million, 26,000-square-foot Florida estate. This retired business executive envisioned adding a mini Caribbean village to his entertainment zone—one filled with shops and eateries to "wow" his friends and family.

When you have a private indoor shopping boulevard in your own home, filled with attractions that rival those in Antigua or Curacao, there's no need to board a plane or leave the premises. Reaching the village is as easy as strolling through the family room, complete with leather sofas and chairs that front a 50-inch LG plasma TV, a pool table, and a bar that features twin 6-foot-tall built-in aquariums. Pass through an arched doorway and you've arrived in the village's cobblestone plaza, which is centered around a large fountain. Overhead is a blue sky that never sees rain, even when night falls and the fiber-optic stars come out. The village's colorful two-story buildings are artfully painted to look like they have been there forever. Tiny party lights, strung across the square, add to the festive feeling.

Unlike many quaint Caribbean villages, this one boasts its own old-time movie palace. The Paramount, a jewel box of a theater masterminded by renowned theater architect and designer Theo Kalomirakis, boasts 12 seats, a 10-foot-wide custom Stewart screen and a sophisticated sound system with six surround-sound channels. Before getting to your seat, you can grab an ice cream cone at the Serendipity Ice Cream Shoppe or climb the stairs to the Viper Room to lounge or listen to an old-fashioned record player. The rock memorabilia, including one of Mick Jagger's jackets and a pair of Elton John's high-heeled boots, will awe you.

Not in the mood for a movie? The adjacent Penn & Feather bookstore, which houses the owner's rare book collection, is always open for browsing. Or there's a cigar bar with big leather sofas and chairs, a 1943 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, a built-in humidor, and a 42-inch LG plasma TV. A sign that reads "Unescorted ladies will be not admitted" hangs on the wall. Or wander upstairs to the balcony area--the site of dozens of friendly poker games. Since the cigar bar is the only smoking area on the estate, a special filtration system quickly erases the billowing cigar clouds, vacuuming them up so the smoke doesn't invade the smoke-free areas of the home.

Best of all, the alfresco Café Carribe is open around the clock. You'll find the outdoor tiki bar just beyond the café's back doors. No reservations are required: Just grab one of the tables that overlook the sandy beach and the 280,000-gallon swimming pool. The outdoor area is landscaped with mountains inspired by the Jurassic Park attraction at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, 18 waterfalls, and a "lazy river" that meanders through the property. A rope bridge hangs high above the pool; a twisting waterslide that glides through one of the mountains deposits guests into the water below.

The homeowner projected his vision into every detail of the project—from the mountains and rocks of the pool area to the gold leafing on the theater's ceiling and the interiors of the village's stores. But it took a village—a crew of professionals that were assembled and led by builder Jerry Glaser of Glaser Homes in Palm Harbor, Fla.—to bring these spaces to life.

The bookstore, says Glaser, has an antique cash register and a battered rolltop desk that add to the Dickensesque look. "The owner said he wanted the bookstore to look like it belongs to someone who just wants to get out of the house and doesn't care if he sells a book or not," Glaser says.

What really makes this project glitter is the theater, which was embellished by fine artists who are trained in artistic finishes. "It's not just the design, it's also the execution," Kalomirakis says of their work. He credits the homeowner for the grandeur of the project because he spared no expense in hiring muralists and decorative painters, including Istvan Torok, who is trained in old-world techniques and has done restoration work for many of Eastern Europe's churches and other landmark buildings. Torok's artistry, and that of his team, "made this theater pop," Kalomirakis says. "The theater would have not looked half as rich and authentic without Torok's work."

The major design challenge for Kalomirakis was the theater's layout—a very narrow, tall space. To manipulate a viewer's perspective of a 40-foot-by-28-foot wide room with 23-foot ceilings, he incorporated 12 balconies along the sidewalls, all of which are inoperable (except for the three in back that store some of the theater equipment). "If I didn't break up the height by having balconies, the theater would have run the risk of looking like an elevator shaft," says Kalomirakis. The curved, dimensional ceiling adds further dimension to a space that could have looked like a shoebox.

This is Kalomirakis' third "theater plus thematic architectural environment," and complex projects such as these make him as nervous as when he designed his first theater in Ronald Lauder's Hampton home in 1989. "Back then, to put a fully decorated movie palace in your home was unheard of—and was considered by some as ostentatious," he says. "Although my first was on the East Coast, I didn't do another one there for years. It was California and Florida where it really caught on."

The same can be said of his thematic architectural environments. The first such project he designed was for a client who owned a French-style home in Pebble Beach, Calif. Today, Kalomirakis is still transforming the home's lower floor into a French village with a bistro, cigar bar, wine cellar, a stationery store that displays the owner's rare pen collection, a toy store that shows off the children's toys, an antique shop with items from around the world, and a grocery store that houses the family's pantry. In response to the homeowner's quest for authenticity, Kalomirakis spent two weeks in France looking for antique doors, tiles, pebble stones, and signs for the stores.

Kalomirakis' second village, "Mainstream USA," is located in the Corona del Mar area of Orange County. "This client grew up in a little town where the Blossom Dairy Café was the local ice cream parlor," he says. The owners show off their collection of Art Deco teapots in the village store windows, while their antique jewels are displayed in the village's jewelry store. Some of the owner's 20-plus Ferrari collection is exhibited on revolving platforms behind the windows of an "exotic car dealership" storefront.

What makes the Tampa project a stand out, Kalomirakis says, is the owner's commitment to quality. "When we met, he told me 'I want a place for my books and for the kids to have ice cream. And I want to have a cigar bar because I have a collection of motorcycles,'" Kalomirakis says. The more demanding and involved the client, the more inspired the designer. "The best clients I have are the big boys. What client would go to this extent without having the big heart of a big kid?"