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Here's What Nitehawk Prospect Park Will Look Like When it Opens

By Leslie Albrecht | October 24, 2016 8:42am
 The Pavilion Theater in Park Slope will be renovated and turned into the Nitehawk Prospect Park, the second location for Williamsburg's Nitehawk Cinema.
The Pavilion Theater in Park Slope will be renovated and turned into the Nitehawk Prospect Park, the second location for Williamsburg's Nitehawk Cinema.
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Flickr/kencta

PARK SLOPE — The cinema that will replace the Pavilion Theater will have a sun-drenched atrium overlooking Prospect Park through towering windows, a newly released rendering shows.

 

A rendering of the second floor of the Nitehawk Prospect Park, the theater replacing The Pavilion, by Think! Architecture.

 

The 650-seat Nitehawk Prospect Park is slated to open next year after a gut renovation of the Pavilion, which will show its last movie Oct. 27. Nitehawk will host a free public farewell party Nov. 1 at the theater, on Prospect Park West and 14th Street.

Before heading into what promises to be a sleeker future for the movie house, it seemed appropriate to pause and honor the Pavilion's highs and lows.

It was easy to hate on the Pavilion. Its 463 Yelp reviews (the average rating was two stars) were a symphony of insults. Its sins over the years have included broken seats, gluey floors, vermin scurrying in the aisles, rumors of bedbugs (which management denied) and even an incorrect display of the American flag.

 


The second floor of the Pavilion.

 

A DNAinfo reader who said he remembered a period in the 1990s when the Pavilion was "gloriously restored" said he was "blown away" by the theater’s disrepair when he saw "Nice Guys" earlier this year.

 


The lobby of the Pavilion.

 

"The theater was like 1,000 degrees, the baseboards along the wall/floor were broken and missing, some pieces of the stairs were missing and crumbled!” wrote the moviegoer. "[T]here was a sign at the top of the theater's stairs that said EXIT. So after the movie some of us desperately headed to it to avoid the scorch,  opened it — SURPRISE!!! — we found ourselves on a FIRE ESCAPE!! But with no stairs leading down.”

But others had fond memories of the Pavilion and described it as a neighborhood theater that was a reliable movie house that served a cross-section of Brooklyn without pretension.

 


A sign on the floor of the Pavilion's lobby.

 

"This is my favorite theater in NYC to be quite honest," one customer wrote on Yelp. "A lot of charm and super laid back atmosphere. Beautiful exterior. Awesome place that feels like a piece of old New York that will be missed when it's gone."

Another said: "So much hatred for this [theater]. It's not nearly as bad as all of these people have made it out to be. If you want to pay $20 a ticket at an AMC or Regal, go ahead. The Pavilion offers the same movies, in the same environment, for less. It's a fine [theater], and no it isn't perfect, but what is? When it's gone, I think a lot of Brooklyn residents will miss it. I know I will."