A crowd gathered outside the Metro Theater on a drizzly Sunday morning, April 6. While a movie hasn’t screened inside the building—whose landmarked façade is currently marked by a single graffiti tag—in 20 years, hope was in the air that one soon would. That optimism was fueled by $3.5 million in discretionary fund grants from Governor Kathy Hochul, $500,000 from the State Senate secured by Brad Hoylman-Sigal, more than 400 donations from locals, and support from the Steven Spielberg and Klingenstein-Martell foundations—all of which paved the way for the nonprofit Upper West Side Cinema Center to purchase the building for $6.9 million on Friday.
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A crowd gathered to learn about the Upper West Side Cinema Center’s plans for the historic venue.
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The Metro Theater originally opened as the Midtown Theater in 1933, primarily screening first-run films from major studios. By the 1940s, it began a long pattern of changing ownership, and by the 1970s, it was showing pornographic films—a trend that continued into the early 1980s. It was then purchased by Dan Talbot, who invested $300,000 in renovations and shifted the programming to foreign films. The venue continued to change hands over the years, with various strategies and renovations attempted, until the neon lights went out on Broadway in 2005.
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“For far too long, the beloved Metro Theater has sat empty—waiting for leaders with the courage and conviction to bring it back to life,” said Governor Kathy Hochul in a news release sent to ILTUWS. “The Upper West Side community deserves another world-class venue for cinema and art, and that’s why I was proud to step in and allocate $3.5 million to make the new Metro Theater a reality.”
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In July, the Upper West Side Cinema Center came with star power locked and loaded, announcing its bid to buy the building. Martin Scorsese, Ethan Hawke, John Turturro, Mary Harron, Bob Balaban, and Griffin Dunne were named to the group’s advisory board, with Upper Wester Tim Blake Nelson joining shortly thereafter.
“Our universities are under attack, the White House is trying to get its way with law firms, with all our institutions. We have to fight back for freedom of expression,” said Congressman Jerry Nadler at the podium on Sunday, under rusty art deco tiles and support beams that were put in place to prevent the marquee from potentially falling. Nadler added that he saw part of that fight during the ‘Hands Off’ rally against President Donald Trump the day before. “We have to fight back to make sure this country doesn’t go down the road to fascism, which the White House wants, and some others want, too. But we’re fighting back.” Nadler, who received cheers from the gallery of onlookers, noted, “Cultural events like this are part of fighting back.”
Senator Brad Hoylman proclaimed, “I often hear about sequels that aren’t quite as good as the original,” quipping that Steven Spielberg never made a bad one. He compared the hopeful reopening of The Metro to a Godfather Part II-caliber moment in history—arguably the greatest sequel ever, and an even rarer case where the follow-up was better than the original.
Several attempts were made over the years to revive the space, including an Alamo DraftHouse that came and went, as well as a Planet Fitness plan that wasn’t financially viable. Development options were tricky due to a previous owner, Albert Bialek, who sold the air rights above the venue.
“But this is sort of the trouble— all these super tall buildings going up for luxury housing, and regular businesses have been driven out of business left and right,” said Kevin Baker, a nearby resident and book author, who told us he remembers coming to the Metro Theater when it showed the 1953 classic Roman Holiday in 1984. “There were so many great businesses—Oppenheimer’s, this little butcher shop, Lenny’s Bagels down there—they’ve been driven out by the landlords, and they never reopen. The spaces sit vacant for years. Something needs to be done.”
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It will take another $15 to $25 million to properly build the planned five-screen theater, lobby lounge, and public café. There will be an educational school component, though further details were not provided. When the question-and-answer portion of the press conference began, the first question was, almost predictably, “How long will this take?” Deutchman said he’d heard it could take anywhere from two and a half years to twenty years, but he was confident that, with the money already raised—$7 million in under five months—this would not be a long, drawn-out process. “To the extent that everybody says it’s going to take five years, ten years, whatever, I’m just not going to let it happen.”
ILTUWS asked the final question of the event, inquiring whether Deutchman had given any thought to the first film he would screen when the theater eventually opens. Senator Hoylman called out “Godfather II” from the back as Deutchman smiled, then paused for a brief moment. “I have a dream for what I’d like to see be our first week, which is to do an Upper West Side Film Festival.”
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This is fine but they still might not open. They used the first $7M including the state funding to buy the place. Now all they need is another $25M to build the movie complex/education center/cafe and then some continuing incoming donations to cover operations when their revenue doesn’t meet their expenses, which is virtually guaranteed.
All of this just to save some old building that should have been torn down long ago and replaced with housing. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have had a residential building there with some working storefronts instead of a falling down old theater for the last two decades.
Short answer:NO!
I heard there was an asbestos removal issue. True or False?
Asbestos will definitely be an issue. As will the plumbing, the HVAC, the electrical, various structural issues and everything else you encounter when renovating an old building that hasn’t been maintained in decades.
Twenty years walking past that ugly closed building with the steel pipes propping up the marquee and yes it would have been better to have pretty much anything else there during that time. If it ever opens it will have been at least a quarter century of having a closed falling down movie theater in the center of the block. What a waste. The state should taken its four million dollars, bought the place a long time ago and turned it over to a developer to start Mitchell Lama 2.0.
This is fantastic news. And no, we don’t need more high rise buildings cluttering up the UWS.
May it be restored to its former glory.
It’s clear this is an economic gamble to say the least but in a city like ours, this bastion of originality is exactly what’s needed and we need to support this as much as we can unless we all want to sit in big box pharmacies for entertainment and make Netflix and Hulu our informal overlords. We also need to show our children how we can come together physically and enjoy shared experiences not to mention encourage the arts in the safety of a protected and valued local cinema