Tuesday, September 8, 2026

Community groups urge NYU Langone to preserve Kips Bay AMC and Fairway

A coalition of neighborhood groups, block associations and tenant organizations is asking NYU Langone to preserve the AMC Kips Bay 15 and Fairway Market following its purchase of the Kips Bay retail complex at 570 Second Ave.

In an Aug. 31 letter, the newly formed Save Kips Bay Coalition expressed concern about the potential loss of businesses that residents and hospital employees rely on for groceries, dining and entertainment. 

The nine signatories include the Alliance for Kips Bay, Murray Hill Neighborhood Association, Waterside Plaza Tenants Association, Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association and several other East Side organizations. 

"When a major institution becomes a property owner in a residential neighborhood, it also becomes a neighbor," said Jessica Lavoie, vice president and chair of the Quality of Life Committee of the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association, in a statement.

The coalition asked NYU Langone to work with residents and community organizations toward an outcome that allows institutional expansion to coexist with neighborhood-serving businesses.
As previously reported, Assemblymember Keith Powers said his office confirmed that NYU Langone purchased the property, which includes the theater and Fairway, about a year ago. 

The health system has not publicly disclosed its plans for the site, and Fairway's future remains unclear. 

AMC has said the 15-screen theater will operate through the end of the year before closing because the property owner exercised its contractual right to terminate the lease early. A formal closing date has not been announced. 

The theater opened in 1999 under the Loews banner and is currently the only AMC location with an IMAX screen on Manhattan's East Side. 

Powers and six other elected officials previously sent NYU Langone a letter requesting a meeting and calling for greater transparency about the property. They also asked the health system to preserve the theater and supermarket and allow public review of any land-use or rezoning proposals. 

Meanwhile, Community Board 6 will hold a public hearing on the planned AMC closure tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7 p.m. Details here

Find more info at Save Kips Bay. Petition here.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Notice to incoming students: This is why you get dirty looks when proudly donning your NYU garb.

Anonymous said...

dirty a looks to people who actually pay rent, spend money and attend a university that is a major employer. And NYU dental provides excellent care to low income and homeless

Anonymous said...

Not just a major employer, but also the biggest land owner / landlord in Manhattan, who causes endless evictions and gentrification. It's an ACME island, we just living in it.

cmarrtyy said...

Didn't they recently dump their psychiatric patients on us on 3rd street...;. because they deliberately let the building deteriorate.

Anonymous said...

@12:31. Exactly. For those who need a reminder, "ACME island" is a metaphor: the dominant landlord/employer/NYU functions like the cartoon ACME Corp, a monolithic entity that controls nearly everything, and whose "products" result in evictions, rent hikes, displacement, they keep backfiring on the people living here, just like Wile E. Coyote's gadgets. And to the earlier comment about the NYU dental school. Granted it serves a community, but it also exploits that community with a massive factory of a school, which is called that and well known within the New York dental community, which has to repair a whole lot of the work done at NYU. If you have bad teeth and no money, they will gladly have their students extract your teeth and not fully explain follow up treatment or even offer a root canal for that matter, which costs a lot of money there and endless appointments.

Grieve said...

NYC Health + Hospitals owns NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue ... clinical operations are tied to the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, though they aren't responsible for the facility's condition.