dpThe owner of the AMC movie theater in Kips Bay is pleading to keep the curtain from falling on the beloved Manhattan cinema — but says NYU just wants them gone.
The 15-screen movie house, located in a two-story retail strip at Second Ave. and 31st St., is slated to close Jan. 3 to make way for a new medical facility for NYU Langone Health System, whose mothership NYU Langone Hospital sits just a block to the east. NYU is expected to close on a deal to buy the property by next year.
“AMC Theatres does not want to go. Not one little bit,” AMC CEO Adam Aron says in an open letter to the Kips Bay community “AMC Theatres wants to stay in Kips Bay.”
The cinema CEO’s lengthy letter goes on to say that the movie theater, which has been there for 27 years, “will soon be forced against our will to close its doors.”
“Unfortunately, the decision to retain or end AMC’s tenure in Kips Bay is not ours to make,” Aron writes. “The nearby NYU Langone Health facility wants to expand, seems to be in the process of buying the building in which your (our) theatre now operates, and it wants us gone. In anticipation of such a transfer to NYU Langone, the current building’s owner has terminated our lease.
“We have engaged with NYU Langone, suggesting any number of alternatives — including that it enlarge the current low-rise building to satisfy its desires for a growth of its medical facility but also leaving a theatre in place for you. Or alternatively, we offered that our theatre could get smaller, so that at the very least we could leave something remaining in place to continue to serve you. Sadly, any and all variations that we have proposed have fallen on closed minds.”
Local elected officials are also on board with saving the cinema, joining a rally with community groups outside the cineplex last month. Keeping a supermarket at the site is another top concern for locals: The property currently has a Fairway supermarket on its basement level.
“Any proposed rezoning must deliver what this neighborhood needs: a movie theater, a supermarket and housing,” Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said. “Kips Bay deserves all three, and I’ll fight to make it happen.”
Local elected officials have been meeting with NYU to try to influence its plans for the site, Councilwoman Virginia Maloney told The News.
“This is a huge loss for that neighborhood fabric that is getting harder and harder to find,” Maloney said. “Too many of these community anchors and shared spaces across New York, we’re losing them.”
A recent Pew poll found less than half of Americans reported visiting a movie theater in the past year. Yet, despite the trend of at-home streaming reducing moviegoing, the AMC Kips Bay 15 has been doing great, Aron said. This past summer saw record-breaking revenue at the East Side theater. On several days, it was among AMC’s 10 most-attended cinemas among its 500 U.S. theaters.
“But time is short,” Aron writes. “Unless NYU Langone Health lets us delight the Kips Bay community beyond then, to comply with our terminated lease, the lights on AMC Kips Bay 15 will forevermore see their final sunset on January 3, a mere two and a half months from now.”
NYU Langone did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
