QUEENS — To Nicolas Nicolaou, his 90-year-old Cinemart Cinemas is more than just a place to watch movies.
The theater has been in his family's hands since the mid-1960s and Nicolaou has worked there since he was 15, getting to know many generations of local residents.
“It’s a neighborhood cinema — you come here, you run into your neighbors, your family,” he said. “People came here as children when their grandfather brought them...There is a little history to it.”
So even after the theater lost about $200,000 last year, Nicolaou, 57, refused to close it down.
The five-screen theater, at 106-03 Metropolitan Ave., which opened in 1927, has been struggling for several years, just like many other small theaters in New York, some of which were recently forced to close, he said.
MAJOR QUEENS NEIGHBORHOOD THEATERS, INCLUDING SOME THAT CLOSED OVER THE YEARS:
Last April, another Forest Hills theater, Brandon Cinemas, closed to make way for a new pediatric health facility, and Sunnyside Center Cinemas will soon be turned into housing.
In the era of Netflix and Amazon, all movie theaters, whether big or small, suffer, experts said.
In Queens, home to the Kaufman Astoria Studios and the Museum of the Moving Image, there are currently 13 movie theaters left, including several independently–owned cinemas, according to Cinema Treasures, a website dedicated to movie theaters.
The Bronx has just two cinemas left, after the American Theater in Parkchester and the Whitestone Multiplex Cinemas closed in 2013 to be replaced by retail centers.
Manhattan boasts 74 theaters, Brooklyn 18, and Staten Island — three.
According to the National Association of Theater Owners, 2014 was the worst year in terms of ticket sales — with about 1.26 billion sold — in more than 20 years.
“All movie theaters are facing many obstacles from shrinking [release] windows, piracy, and other media companies [including] Netflix and Amazon,” said Robert Sunshine, executive director of NATO of New York State.
But for neighborhood movie theaters, he noted, the situation is worse.
“Most of these theaters are small, few screens and if they miss on a movie they cannot make it up in either one or two other auditoriums,” Sunshine said.
Nicolaou said that the Cinemart has been struggling primarily because the theater has not been receiving first-run films since 2008.
Earlier this year it got another chance after Warner Bros. decided to license "American Sniper," a major first-run film, to the theater.
Local residents launched a campaign encouraging each other to attend the screenings to help save the Cinemart.
The efforts paid off and the theater just got two more first-run films, the owner said.
"We are going to keep fighting," he said, adding that most small theaters that didn’t have first-run movies closed about a decade ago. “But we don’t want to close," said Nicolaou, who also owns Alpine Cinema in Bay Ridge and Cinema Village in Manhattan.
Harvey Elgart, 65, the owner of Kew Gardens Cinemas, who also runs Cobble Hills Cinemas and Williamsburg Cinemas, said that for many years one of the major threats for New York movie theaters has come from landlords, who often find another, more profitable use for their properties, the fate shared by the Brandon Cinemas and Sunnyside Center Cinemas last year.
“That’s how basically most of the neighborhood theaters went out of business back in the 60s, the 70s, and even 80s — because the real estate was worth more than a movie theater,” Elgart said.
Central Queens had once been filled with small movie theaters, most of which had been closed, their buildings repurposed.
The former Forest Hills Theater building, built on Continental Avenue in the 1920s, has become home to Duane Reade and Buffalo Wild Wings.
The Drake Theatre on Woodhaven Boulevard in Rego Park was at some point used by Joe Abbracciamento Restaurant, but the property sold last year and may possibly be turned into housing.
The Trylon Theater on Queens Boulevard in Rego Park currently serves as a synagogue and educational center, but after the building was bought by new developers in 2013, its fate is also uncertain.
In other areas of Queens, the Elmwood, built in Elmhurst in 1928, became home to the Rock Church, after the theater closed in 2002.
And the historic Ridgewood Theater, which was constructed in 1916 on Myrtle Avenue, will soon be transformed into an apartment building.
“Our theaters have the potential to become film and/or performing arts venues, but creative energy failed in response to landlords selling or leasing out for a quick buck,” local historian Michael Perlman said.
In addition to Kew Gardens Cinemas and Cinemart Cinemas, Central Queens also boasts Main Street Cinemas in Kew Gardens Hills and the Midway Theater on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills.
But many fear that the nine-screen Midway, an Art Moderne cinema designed by renowned architect Thomas White Lamb, may be the next one to close.
The building housing the theater was sold in 2013 to a group of investors for $20.5 million.
At the time of the purchase, developers said they might at some point build on top of the existing space in order to utilize its development rights.
On Thursday, one of the investors, Eric Roth, said that the “movie theater can stay there as long as their lease runs for,” adding that “they have many years to go.”
But local preservationists are skeptical.
“It's a matter of: 'What will we lose next?' Perlman said.
Elgart, who opened his seven-screen Williamsburg Theater on Grand Street in 2012, said that despite many setbacks he remains optimistic about the future of neighborhood movie theaters.
“You can’t replace the movie-going experience versus watching a movie in your living room,” he said. “When the lights go out, you feel the magic of the movies.”
