Movie Theaters Getting Second Acts as Luxury Housing and Office Space
(DNAINFO) Amy Zimmer | May 19, 2017 — As Netflix, Amazon and unlimited streaming services tempt film buffs to stay home instead of venturing out to the theaters, the city’s movie theaters are struggling to stay afloat, as yet another theater bites the dust.
The Lower East Side’s Landmark Sunshine Cinema was sold Wednesday, after being on the market for two years, to a pair of developers who plan to turn the space into offices and retail, East End Capital’s Adam Pagoda told DNAinfo New York.
Landmark — which opened in 2001 in the 1898 building that had been a Yiddish vaudeville house — struggled to keep up with rising rents and hoped to reinvent itself a few years back as a dining destination like Williamsburg’s Nitehawk Cinema. Locals, however, fought those plans, with Community Board 3 rejecting the theater’s liquor license application.
The art house theater’s lease ends January 2018, and it will likely be pushed out, though, Pagoda said he’d be open to negotiating with Landmark.
Several other old movie theaters are being reinvented with new uses — most of which appear fated to become luxury housing.