Assemblymember Keith Powers said his office confirmed that NYU Langone purchased the parcel that includes the movie theater and Fairway Market about a year ago, PIX11 reported.
NYU Langone has not publicly disclosed its plans for the property. The future of Fairway is also unclear.
This last Thursday, Powers and six other local elected officials sent a letter asking NYU Langone to meet with them and discuss ways to keep the theater open. The group includes Rep. Jerry Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, City Councilmember Harvey Epstein, and other city and state representatives.
The officials criticized NYU Langone for keeping residents in the dark and called on it to disclose its development plans. They also urged the health system to preserve AMC and Fairway, limit its expansion into commercial corridors and allow public review of any land-use or rezoning proposals.
As previously reported, AMC said the 15-screen theater, which opened in 1999 under the Loews umbrella, will operate through the end of the year before closing because the property owner exercised its contractual right to terminate the lease early.Kips Bay update; We have confirmed that NYU Langone now owns the site at 570 Second Avenue in Kips Bay and has for about a year.
— Keith Powers (@KeithPowersNYC) August 27, 2026
Along with my partners in government, I have written to NYU Langone requesting a dialogue with our offices and the community. pic.twitter.com/wFCALN2YfI
A formal closing date has not been announced.
The site's movie-theater history dates to 1962. According to Cinema Treasures, the original one-screen Kips Bay Theatre opened that October with "Requiem for a Heavyweight."
Known for its large screen, 70mm presentations and curtains that opened and closed before each film, the theater shut down in January 1994. The surrounding strip mall was later demolished to make way for the current multiplex and adjacent storefronts.
A resident-led Save Kips Bay campaign and petition are also calling for the theater — the only AMC with an IMAX screen on Manhattan's East Side — to remain open.
Petition link here.
8 comments:
I would rather have a hospital than a movie theater, if asked to choose. I think our elected officials should save their energy for more critical issues.
I can't see how a deal, signed quietly or not, could be reversed.
Don't forget, NYU are the owners of this island, we just live in it.
Hospitals are pretty important public infrastructure. Hard to see why NIMBYs need to rally for this cause. Movie theater business is scaling back all over the country . . .
Listen, I am sad the movie theater has to close, but it seems like there are better things to do than try to prevent the inevitable here. The same people clamoring to keep the theater open will be the same people complaining when there are not enough hospital beds or other type of medical facility in the area.
Maybe they want to build housing for their students or house staff?
The last thing we need as a community is more empty retail space and except for the theater and Fairway, everything else here is empty (RIP Borders).
Why exactly do we need to choose? We literally live in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. A hospital just closed on 16th and 1st and is just sitting there. NYU owns several blocks directly behind the movie theater. We're human beings. We're allowed to want and clamor for spaces where we can get together and enjoy something. Believe it or not, that's also for the betterment of us as people. The idea the movie theater simply HAS to be knocked down (not to mention a supermarket) is ludicrous. Regular working folk have been hit over the head for years with the idea that we do not deserve things, and asking for anything that might be considered non-essential makes us greedy. This isn't an either/or choice.
I smell lux housing.
NYU, Columbia and the Catholic Diocese, and “nonprofit” hospitals own a huge amount land on this small island and do not pay taxes. They have also closed down hospitals with impunity and flipped the land for massive profits in areas that need hospitals; St. Vincent’s Hospital, a West Village teaching hospital that is now condos, which will also happen soon with Mount Sinai Beth Isreal, which was closed after 135 years, following him long, legal battle, just like St. Vincent’s. So I have no interest in the NYU Langone industrial complex devouring another place that served the community, much less the arts, for decades. NYU can easily afford to make this small concession to the community. The NYU Board of trustees includes six members with major real estate development, backgrounds: NYU Langone board of trustees, three members with real estate development empires, including the Mack, Silverstein and Rudin and a Shanghai based real estate company. And their companies are the ones that will build the NYU expansion. Pay attention! NYU shills go elsewhere please.
People still go to the movies in 2026? I’d rather have a hospital there, or better yet where the old Beth Israel was. It would be good if Fairway could stay. Since most of it is underground, maybe NYU could build on top of it and keep Fairway there.
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