AMC CEO Adam Aron has spoken out on the closure of New York City’s popular AMC Kips Bay 15 movie theater, which will shutter on Jan. 3. Aron wrote a letter to the Kips Bay community and addressed how the nearby hospital NYU Langone, which plans to grow its medical facility, has not engaged with any of AMC’s alternatives to share the space. In addition to the 15-screen AMC theater, the building also houses a Fairway supermarket and bank, which are also expected to close.
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,” Aron writes. 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.” On Aug. 24, Variety reported that the Kips Bay theater would close at the end of 2026, ending a 27-year run at the location. AMC took over the theater in 2006, which became the chain’s second-largest multiplex in the city (after Times Square’s Empire 25 theater). The Kips Bay location has become adored by local residents, who staged a protest in September in an attempt to stop the closure.
There are also major upcoming movies like “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Dune: Part III,” which Kips Bay residents will now still get a chance to see at their beloved theater before it closes for good. Since news first broke that our popular AMC Kips Bay 15-screen movie theatre located at 570 Second Avenue in Manhattan will soon be forced against our will to close its doors, I’ve been struck by the extraordinary support that this AMC theatre has received from within the local surrounding community. So many moviegoers and neighbors, and importantly so many of your elected officials, have rallied around our theatre. (Given the central role that movie theatres play in the lives of so many New Yorkers, perhaps it is much better and more accurate to say that so many of you have rallied around YOUR theatre.) On behalf of everyone at AMC, thank you.
Your support means a great deal to us, and especially to our theatre team members at AMC Kips Bay 15 who work tirelessly day-in and day-out to put smiles on your faces. In thinking about this theatre, which has been a cultural icon and entertainment lifeline to so many nearby residents for decades and decades since its opening on May 14 1999, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: AMC Theatres does not want to go. AMC Theatres wants to stay in Kips Bay.
Operating under long term leases, there was a time that the monies headed each month to the theatre’s landlord had risen to become so high that the theatre’s long-term viability was uncertain. But, we were fortunate to have been successful in addressing those concerns in recent years. Today this theatre (one which has been in continuous operation for more than 25 years) has a bright future — if we would be allowed to keep it.
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