By: Benyamin Davidsons

The landmark Metro movie theater in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, which was shuttered some 20 years ago, was finally sold. As reported by the NY Times, a nonprofit was able to purchase the theatre after it received $3.5 million in discretionary grants from Gov. Kathy Hochul, and another $500,000 in grants from the State Senate, pushed by Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal. The sale of Metro Theater went through on Friday, with a price tag of $6.9 million.

The buyer, a nonprofit named the Upper West Side Cinema Center, has plans to revitalize the building, located on Broadway near West 99th Street. The theater will be revamped with a five-screen theater, a lobby lounge as well as a public cafe. It will need to raise an extra $15 million to $25 million in funding in order to complete plans to construct a new interior, replace the marquee and clean graffiti from the facade, the nonprofit said.

The Metro Theater, was first opened in 1933 as the Midtown Theater, and its pink terra-cotta facade was named a landmark in 1989. It was permanently shuttered in December 2005, despite community- wide opposition and protests. The building’s previous owner, Albert Bialek, said Metro could n0t compete against the new tide of large multiplex theaters. “As a neighborhood theater, the building is obsolete,” he told The New York Times in 2006.

Since then, there were numerous failed attempts to reimagine the space, including a bid in 2015 to turn it into a Planet Fitness gym. There were also two pitches in 2012 and 2022 to have it acquired by the theater chain Alamo Drafthouse. The building’s landmark status on the facade and the sale of the air rights above the building complicated matters.

“The Upper West Side community deserves another world-class venue for cinema and art, and that’s why I was proud to step in,” Gov. Hochul said. The deal couldn’t have gone through without intervention from Assemblyman Micah Lasher, a Democrat who took office in January representing the General Assembly for district 69, which includes the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, and Manhattan Valley.

Lasher said he grew up going to the Metro Theater with his family, and has happy memories of seeing “Ali” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus” there. “Its loss for the last 20 years has been not just an eyesore, but a deeply felt scar for the neighborhood,” he said. In December, Lasher heard that the Upper West Side Cinema Center was not going to meet a Jan. 10 deadline to buy the theater building from the estate of its previous owner. Lasher contacted Hochul pushing it as a venture in the neighborhood’s revitalization.

Per the Times, besides for the grants from Gov Hochul and the state senate, there were also donations from foundations and individuals, including a major grant from Kate Capshaw and the Steven Spielberg’s Hearthland Foundation that helped the deal actualize.

Ira Deutchman, an independent film producer who together with Adeline Monzier leads the nonprofit who purchased the building, is still looking to raise up to $25 million for the interior restoration. “I’m just going to channel the fact that we managed to raise $7 million in less than five months,” Deutchman said.

A lawyer for the Bialek estate, John Simoni, said in an email that the family was “so proud and excited that Mr. Bialek’s long-held dream for a theater is finally being realized” with the sale.