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Closings
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March 5, 2017
Westwood Village, LA, CA - The Classic Landmark Regent Theatre in Westwood Is Closing After 50 Years
From Los Angeles Magazine: The owners of the Landmark Regent Theatre in Westwood have submitted paperwork to convert the 50-year-old movie house on Broxton Avenue into two restaurants. The neighborhood, once bustling with movie houses and a popular place for splashy premieres, now has three remaining theaters: The Bruin, the Fox, and iPic on Wilshire Boulevard.
The Regent was built as retail stores in the 1940s and was a warehouse when Laemmle remodeled it into “L.A.’s Most Beautiful Intimate Theatre” in September 1966. They played art pictures into the 1970s when Mann Theaters, who ran the Fox and the Chinese in Hollywood, acquired it. The Regent upped their cinematic game when Landmark took over in 2002, but this was never a movie palace and the neighborhood seems to have lost interest in movies.
In the last decade or so the Avco Cinema was converted into the iPic, and the Crest, Festival, Plaza, National, Mann 4, and UA Westwood have all gone out of business. People might have shifted their viewing habits, but they’re still hungry. Almost all the former theater sites now house restaurants.
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February 24, 2017
Marion, NC - Marion Event Center closes in old House Theater
From mcdowellnews.com: The Marion Event Center is no longer operating and a “for sale” sign is now in the front window of the old House Theater building.
In May of 2014, Mike Cinquanto and his mother and stepfather, Esther and Doug Williams, started working to restore the old theater at 90 E. Court St. and operate it as the Marion Event Center. They did extensive renovations to the interior and fixed up the restrooms. Over time, the family removed layers of Formica, plaster, chipped paint and mold from the structure. They restored the interior so it would resemble a nightclub from the 1950s, according to an article in June 2015.
“We would like to use it as a rental for weddings, anniversaries and class reunions,” said Cinquanto in June 2015. “We want to make it available for things like company Christmas parties and corporate parties. I’m hoping to get the Board of Realtors to come down here and use it for their Christmas party. We just want to get the community back in here.”
They had also planned to restore the exterior and have the marquee and neon sign restored to its former glory.
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Springfield, OH - Upper Valley Mall movie theater closes after decades
From the Springfield News-Sun: The Upper Valley Mall Cinema 5’s screens went dark permanently Monday night after entertaining customers in Springfield for nearly five decades. The movie theater had fewer than a dozen employees, said Philip Chakeres, president and chief executive officer of Chakeres Theatres.
The decision to close the theater is the latest blow to the mall, which has been hit with a steady stream of bad news from national retailers leaving the aging shopping center.
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February 9, 2017
Green Bay, WI - Budget Cinemas to close amid East Town redevelopment plans
From Fox11online.com: One of the main tenants of Green Bay’s East Town Mall will close next week. The Budget Cinemas is going dark amid plans to try to redevelop the entire mall. Although, Kevin Vonck, Green Bay’s economic development director, believes the closure likely would have happened either way. “You just look at the rise globally of Netflix and Amazon and all these other streaming services and across the nation movie theatres are taking a hit,” said Vonck.
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February 3, 2017
Kalamazoo, MI - Movie theater closing doors
From grbj.com: A movie theater in the region featuring more than 30 draft beers has announced it will close.
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Kalamazoo, at 180 Portage St., announced this week it plans to close on April 3.
Alamo representative Steve Phillips says the property on which the theater sits was sold, and the new owner plans to terminate Alamo’s lease, according to a Jan. 31 notice filed with the State of Michigan and Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell.
Phillips, senior director of people at Alamo, says this will result in a permanent shutdown of the theater and across-the-board layoffs.
“Some Alamo employees whose Kalamazoo positions will be eliminated may receive offers to transfer to different Alamo locations. However, like all other Kalamazoo employees, any employees who receive but reject an offer to transfer to a different location will no longer work for Alamo after their Kalamazoo position is eliminated,” Phillips says.
On Facebook, a message by the theater thanks long-time patrons.
“We want to thank everyone who has visited this theater over the years, and we hope you will continue to support cinema long after our departure,” the post says.
“All gift cards and advance tickets will be honored through April 3rd. If you have purchased an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema gift card and would like a refund, please visit the box office.”
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January 24, 2017
Santa Fe, NM - DeVargas Center movie theater closing
From the Santa Fe New Mexican: The six-screen UA DeVargas movie theater will shut down this month, leaving a hole in both the north-side DeVargas Center mall and the Santa Fe cinema scene that mall management and theater operators say they hope to see filled quickly. The theater’s manager refused repeated requests for comment about the venue’s demise after four decades, referring all questions to Regal Entertainment Group corporate offices in Knoxville, Tenn., where multiple phone messages seeking comment this week went unreturned. But the mall’s property manager, Katy Fitzgerald, confirmed that the DeVargas Center and Regal will part ways soon. The theater’s final screenings, she said, will be Sunday. The DeVargas Center will redevelop the 14,700-square-foot space — which has housed a movie theater since 1977 — over the next six months as part of a larger overhaul intended to make the mall’s exterior facing North Guadalupe Street more pedestrian-friendly, Fitzgerald said. As important, she added, is how a new tenant — not necessarily a theater — will mesh with the mall’s interior, which has been livelier since a flock of local businesses began migrating from Sanbusco Market Center in late 2015 after the New Mexico School for the Arts purchased that complex next to the Railyard. “We loved our theater customers, and we’ll be sad to see that go,” Fitzgerald said, “but I’m not really that concerned as far as how that affects the direction we’ve been heading in with our Sanbusco tenants and with the inside of the mall.” UA DeVargas is the second long-term tenant to leave the DeVargas Center in recent months: Hastings, part of the entertainment-media and books retail chain, went out of business last fall. But the losses won’t stall the mall’s momentum, Fitzgerald said; rather, in her view, those spaces facing North Guadalupe Street are in dire need of rejuvenation. The aim, she said, is to make that area of the mall as “open and inviting and local” as the section that fronts Paseo de Peralta. In diagnosing the demise of the DeVargas theater, several in the local cinema scene identified Violet Crown as a factor. The 11-screen Railyard venue opened in May 2015 and offers a full restaurant menu as well as an extensive beer and wine list. Peter Grendle, general manager at Violet Crown, said his theater and UA DeVargas “split the field” of film options, operating in a middle ground between a major blockbuster atmosphere and one of art-house chic. But the stakes have been raised: Moviegoers now want and expect more from a night out at the movies than the movie itself, he said, and thriving theaters have taken steps to accommodate the changing appetites of their audience. “The rule used to be, ‘Stay home for dinner, go out for entertainment,’” Grendle said. “Now you go out for dinner, stay home for entertainment. … My goal here is to be a hospitality venue, to make the movie theater an experience.” Far from crowing about a competitor’s closure, Grendle nonetheless sounded an optimistic note. “I think it’s a good thing for the little guys, for sure,” Grendle said, referencing The Screen on the Santa Fe University of Art and Design campus where he booked films for nine years before moving to Violet Crown. “It opens the field a little bit. Pretend you have five boxers in a ring, and one gets taken out. Life will change after that. The question on my mind is what is [Regal’s] next step, if any.” The theater chain’s Regal Santa Fe Stadium 14 on the city’s south side is not far from the Santa Fe Place mall, where the company once operated a pair of theaters when that mall was known as Villa Linda. Recent signage there has advertised Regal as a new tenant. However, messages left for Santa Fe Place management asking about any plans to bring a theater back to the shopping center off Rodeo Road were not immediately returned. Grendle said he would dispute the notion that Santa Fe is oversaturated with movie screens. The City Different, he remembers one film distributor telling him, has one of the best box offices in the nation, a market where films that close in one week elsewhere might run for three. Grendle chalks it up to eclectic tastes of the local moviegoing crowd. Jason Silverman, director of Center for Contemporary Arts Cinematheque, agrees that the DeVargas closure is not indicative of the state of moviegoing in Santa Fe. The CCA Cinematheque, for instance, is entering its 35th year, he said, and this past year was its best ever. The DeVargas theater’s disappearance from the local scene won’t much affect that, he said. “We don’t really think about fighting for titles,” Silverman said. “We play the films that we love.” But, Silverman said, “each time there’s a change, each time a venue arrives or leaves, the algorithm changes a little bit.” Elias Gallegos, who works for George R.R. Martin, the local author and owner of the Jean Cocteau Cinema in the Railyard, said the DeVargas closing is “something that we’re all kind of sad to hear about, and, you know, we wonder what’s next for that space.” He went on, “Who knows? Maybe George will be interested in more screens here in town,” referencing Martin’s 2013 purchase and restoration of the single-screen Cocteau. “We never say never here.” Of the seven films screening at UA DeVargas on Tuesday, four (Collateral Beauty, Jackie, Nocturnal Animals and The Eagle Huntress) were available at no other theater in Santa Fe. Mary Peters, on her way into the theater Tuesday to see The Eagle Huntress, said she drives down from Española specifically for UA DeVargas. The selection of films at the Dreamcatcher 10 doesn’t quite do it for her. “Ah, that’s too bad,” she said of the impending closure. “I’m bummed.” After UA DeVargas is gone, she said, “Violet Crown will probably be the next choice.” Anne Steele, bound for The Eagle Huntress with her grandchildren, was crestfallen when asked about the theater’s closing: “Oh, no, I’m really upset.” The UA DeVargas and CCA are her go-to spots, and she doesn’t like the Regal 14 on the city’s south side because she finds the audio there is too loud. The UA DeVargas, she said, has always been a “more humane experience, as opposed to a sensational experience out there.” David Morrell, a Santa Fe author, said that since he and his wife moved to Santa Fe in 1992, they have frequented the DeVargas theater more than any other. “If there was a unique film that we really wanted to see, we knew it would be at DeVargas,” Morrell wrote in an email. “Sad to see it close.”
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January 17, 2017
Brighton, NY - Cinemark Movies 10 in Brighton is closing
From the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle: No word on how many employees will lose their jobs or if they will be offered work at another Cinemark property, the Tinseltown USA and IMAX in Gates.
The Brighton movie complex stood out from other theaters that offered reserved adult tickets for $12.49, reclining seats and larger format screens. . Four tickets to an evening screening of the animated film Storks at Movies 10 went for about $17.50 last weekend.
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January 14, 2017
Staten Island, NY - UA movie theater and Toys R Us to close in Hylan Plaza
From SIlive.com: After more than 25 years in operation, the UA Hylan Plaza and Toys R Us/Babies R Us will be closing by Jan. 31 to make way for the new $150 million Boulevard shopping mall.
Both stores are among several that have leases expiring this month, said Joshua Weinkranz, president, northeast region of Kimco Realty, the owner of the shopping center.
Stores in Hylan Plaza will be closing as leases expire to make way for the summer construction start of the 356,000-square-foot shopping center that will house 60 retailers in a multi-level “Main Street” format.
While both Toys R Us/Babies R Us and the movie theater have announced the closures, several retailers may opt for short-term leases until construction commences, said Weinkranz.
“We are in the process of working out short-term extensions with them because we don’t have the entitlements yet. If some of these tenants want to stay for four or five months, we’ll work that out with them,” he said.
TOYS R US CLOSURE
Said Candace Disler, a Toys R Us spokeswoman: “We have enjoyed serving the Staten Island community and will continue to operate a number of stores in the area, throughout the state of New York, including a Toys R Us located at 2845 Richmond Ave. in Staten Island,”
In addition, a Toys R Us outlets store will be opening in Empire Outlets, when New York City’s first outlet mall opens in St. George in November.
Regal Entertainment didn’t respond to queries for comment regarding the movie theater closure.
ALWAYS A MOVIE THEATER
For most of Hylan Plaza’s existence since the mid-1960s, it has housed a movie theater. It was formerly Fox Plaza before Regal Entertainment opened the UA in the 1990s.
And once the Boulevard is up and running, there will be a new movie theater.
“The Boulevard will have a great theater, along with a fitness center, a great mix of other general merchandise retailers, restaurants and service tenants,” said Weinkranz.
“Over the next several weeks and months we will be able to announce the tenants.”
APPROVAL PROCESS
After filing plans with the City Planning Department in 2015, Kimco Realty Corp. began the mandated Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) for the shopping mall in September.
Part of that process is an Environmental Impact Statement, which will need to be certified before construction starts.
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January 7, 2017
Douglaston, Queens, NY - Douglaston Macy’s and movie theater to move out, Lowe’s Home Improvement looking to move in
From QNS.com: There are some big retail changes coming to Douglaston in the new year.
Douglaston Plaza shopping center, located at 242-02 61st Ave. at the intersection of the Long Island Expressway and the Cross Island Parkway, is losing its Macy’s department store and the MovieWorld movie theater, but gaining a big box home improvement retailer.
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December 22, 2016
Bloomington, MN - Mall of America to close movie theater this year
From KARE11.com: The Mall of America will close its movie theaters next week to make room for a new “entertainment experience,” according to mall officials.
The 14-screen theater has been a fixture of the mall, which has owned the space for the last eight years, occupying a large portion of the fourth floor. Previous to the mall’s ownership, it was a General Cinema theater.
Here’s the full statement released by the Mall of America on Thursday: Over the past 24 years Mall of America has continually transformed, evolved and refreshed itself. After a successful eight-year run, Theatres at Mall of America will close at the end of day on December 28, 2016 to make way for a new, first-to-market entertainment venue which will open in late 2017. All current theatre employees remain a valuable part of our team and have been offered positions within Mall of America. More information on the new venue will be released in early January. The Theatres at MOA also confirmed the news earlier this week, replying to fans on Twitter asking why the theater wasn’t showing the new “Star Wars: Rogue One.”