Lights Out: What Happened to the Movie Theaters of Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island — And What It Means for Retail Real Estate

iPic Theaters — the luxury dine-in chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2026, its second bankruptcy in seven years.

The news broke last week and nobody was surprised. iPic Theaters — the Florida-based luxury dine-in cinema chain with 13 locations, 100 screens, and attached restaurants — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in seven years. Despite premium seating, chef-driven menus, and every amenity the industry promised would save the cinema, they posted a $19 million loss on $112.5 million in revenue in 2025.

It is the latest in a cascade of failures that has fundamentally reshaped the movie theater landscape across our backyard — Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island — in ways that every landlord, developer, and retail broker needs to understand.

The question I keep getting asked is whether a movie theater still belongs in a lifestyle or entertainment-anchored retail project. To answer it properly, you have to look at what has actually happened here, in our market, over the past decade. The story is more instructive than anything the national trade press has written.

What We Lost — And What Replaced It

Long Island

The most dramatic single data point for anyone reading this in the retail real estate world is one that hits close to home — literally.

The Showcase Cinema de Lux Broadway in Hicksville, which operated at 955 South Broadway for nearly 30 years as part of what was then called Broadway Commons, chose not to renew its lease at the start of 2025. National Amusements, Showcase’s parent company, simply walked away. The theater had opened as Broadway Multiplex Cinemas in May 1995 as part of the original Broadway Mall redevelopment — it was, at the time, a marquee addition that was supposed to cement the property as a regional entertainment destination.

Three decades later, it is a vacant box. And the property — now The Shops on Broadway, acquired by our BTF Capital Fund group in partnership with KABR, AJM Real Estate, and Burman Real Estate — is in the midst of a $100 million transformation into an open-air lifestyle center. The theater question is exactly the right one to be asking as that redevelopment takes shape.

The Hicksville closure is not an isolated story. The Commack Multiplex Cinemas, the 15-screen National Amusements complex that anchored a 20-acre parcel off Exit 53 of the LIE for nearly 30 years, was sold to Lowe’s Home Improvement in 2010 for $13 million. The theater stayed open briefly under the terms of the deal before closing in September 2011. By early 2013, the building had been demolished. A Lowe’s stands on the site today.

The Malverne Cinema, which operated on Hempstead Avenue in Nassau County for 34 years, closed its doors on September 29, 2024. Its operators cited COVID as the turning point that permanently altered their economics. They continue to operate Bellmore Movies in Bellmore — the last single-screen movie theater on all of Long Island, an institution that has survived since before the Spanish Flu of 1918 by reinventing itself as a live entertainment venue: comedy shows, plays, children’s theater, film festivals, and music — with movies as one programming format among many.

Brooklyn

The most significant recent example is the former Linden Boulevard Multiplex Cinemas in East New York — a 70,000-square-foot, 2,600-seat National Amusements multiplex that had been a neighborhood fixture since 1998. In July 2023, Food Bazaar’s parent company Bogopa Enterprises purchased the theater building and its 8.6-acre parcel for $40 million, financed with a $44.9 million mortgage from Acore Capital. The theater closed January 2, 2024. Food Bazaar spent the better part of a year converting the massive, column-free box into what opened in 2025 as the largest Food Bazaar in Brooklyn — complete with a food hall, in-store hydroponic garden, pharmacy, chef’s cooking school, and one preserved original auditorium repurposed as a community meeting and events space. The community reaction was overwhelming. Residents called it “the best thing that’s happened in this community in a long time.”

The lesson for landlords is significant. A 70,000 SF dark-box multiplex — historically considered one of the hardest assets to repurpose — was converted into a full-service neighborhood anchor that generates more community goodwill than the theater it replaced. The land value ($40M for 8.6 acres in East New York) also demonstrates how landlords can unlock value from theater parcels that were locked into below-market, long-term entertainment leases.

Earlier losses in Brooklyn include some of the most storied cinema addresses in New York City. The Brooklyn Paramount — built by Paramount Pictures in 1928 in ornate Rococo style, seating 4,000 people, and once hosting Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Holly, and Chuck Berry — was converted by LIU into one of the most beautiful collegiate gyms in the country. The Kenmore Theater in Flatbush, with its domed ceiling and Art Nouveau murals, was gutted for a Modell’s. The Loew’s Oriental in Bensonhurst became a Marshall’s. The Chopin Theater in Greenpoint — which once showed Polish-language films for a nickel — is now a Starbucks.

The pattern is consistent: the theater use was not what the market rewarded.

Queens

Queens has seen significant contraction as well, though the outer borough’s demographic density and transit accessibility have kept more commercial theaters viable than in comparable suburban markets. The key closures have been driven by the same forces — lease economics, post-pandemic attendance declines, and strategic decisions by large corporate chains that no longer see value in maintaining secondary locations when their flagships carry the load.

Who Is Still Standing — And Why

The theaters that remain open across our market fall into two clear categories. There is almost nothing in between.

The Scaled Corporate Multiplex

On Long Island, the survivors are the large-format, well-capitalized operators who invested heavily in the premium experience: AMC Dine-In locations in Levittown and Huntington, the Showcase Island 16 Cinema de Lux in Holtsville (the dominant venue in eastern Suffolk, positioned off the LIE), Cinema de Lux Farmingdale, AMC Stony Brook 17, Regal Deer Park at the Tanger Outlets, and Regal Westbury. These locations succeed because they offer something the home screen cannot replicate — IMAX, 4DX, MX4D motion effects, premium large-format laser projection, and in-theater dining. The investment in the experience is the moat.

In Queens, Regal Tangram in Flushing has become one of the most interesting theater success stories in the outer boroughs, drawing heavily on the Chinese-American community with targeted programming and a 4DX offering that generates genuine repeat traffic. In Brooklyn, the Alamo Drafthouse at City Point — now the Spike Lee Cinema — expanded to 12 screens in 2024. It succeeds because it is a food-and-beverage-driven entertainment venue that happens to show films, not the other way around.

The Curated Independent

This is the category that surprises people — and it has the clearest implications for lifestyle retail development.

Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn, with two locations (Williamsburg and the restored 1928 Pavilion Theater at Prospect Park), has built the most genuinely vibrant independent cinema business in the New York market. It succeeds not because of what it shows but because of what surrounds the movies: a food and beverage program, a community identity, repertory programming, midnight screenings, brunch events, and a cocktail bar overlooking Prospect Park. Every element is designed to make the experience irreplaceable by streaming.

On Long Island, Bellmore Movies and the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington operate on similar principles — programming identity, community integration, and the willingness to be something more than a dark room with a screen.

These independents have figured out, without intending to, exactly what the experiential retail world has been trying to articulate: the venue has to be the product, not just the container for the product.

What This Means for Lifestyle and Mixed-Use Development

Here is the honest assessment, drawn from what we have watched happen across our specific market over the past decade:

The conventional multiplex as a lifestyle center anchor is finished. The Hicksville Showcase closure is the definitive local proof point. A theater chain with 30 years at a location, in a well-trafficked suburban corridor, simply chose not to renew. No amount of recliner seating or loyalty programs changed the calculation.

The right entertainment tenant for today’s lifestyle center is interactive and participatory. Concepts like Round 1 Entertainment, Puttshack, Topgolf, and Bowlero generate traffic that is inherently social, photographable, and repeatable in a way that passive film viewing is not. These are the tenants that anchor the next generation of open-air centers.

Food and beverage is now the anchor. The Food Bazaar conversion of the Linden Boulevard Multiplex illustrates this perfectly — the grocery and food function replaced the entertainment function and generated more community enthusiasm than the theater ever did.

The theater box itself is a real estate opportunity. 30,000 to 70,000 square feet of column-free, high-ceiling space is coming back to market across our area. Immersive entertainment, indoor sports, fitness, food halls, and community event space all thrive in the footprint that cinema built. The Linden Boulevard conversion, the Commack Lowe’s, the LIU gym inside the Brooklyn Paramount — each is a different answer to the same question: what do you do with a big dark box when the movies leave?

The cinema has a future — but only in specific formats. IMAX and premium large-format presentations for event films will continue to draw audiences. Curated independents with strong programming identity and food and beverage integration will hold their communities. The luxury dine-in model built around whatever the studios release each weekend — the iPic model — is what has failed and will continue to fail.