‘New Plan for UWS Metro Theater’; Where Have We Heard That Before?

By Carol Tannenhauser

It’s deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra used to say.

“Upper West Side Metro Theater Officially Has a New Owner and a New Plan,” West Side Rag wrote on April 7 this year.

Where have we heard that before: a “New Plan” for the Metro Theater, the historic neighborhood movie house on the Upper West Side?

Opened on June 2, 1933, on Broadway between West 99th and 100th streets as the Midtown Theater, over the decades the Metro showed first-run, foreign, porn, art, and indie films, before closing in 2005 after a long legal battle between the owner and lessee for control of it.

The owner, Albert Bialek, won.

In 2006, presumably in anticipation of a new tenant, Bialek gutted the interior of the theater, which, unlike the Art Deco exterior facade, was not landmarked.

Relying on the Rag’s archives, you can find a promise of something “new” for the Metro as far back as May 17, 2011 – one day after West Side Rag was born. “A New Life for the Metro Theater,” the nascent “blog” boldly declared. The article told of a partnership with a nonprofit educational organization. “The group is proposing a three-floor theater and education complex at the site,” The New York Times elaborated. 

Just seven months later, on January 4, 2012, the Rag wrote about the Metro again. “Retailer Coming to Old Metro Theater,” the headline now promised. It was then that we met Albert Bialek, who bought the theater in 1987 and, after shutting it down in 2005, for 18 years tried unsuccessfully to lease it out, before his death in 2023.

By April 5, 2012, the retail rumor was history: “The Upper West Side is getting a new movie theater!” the Rag reported. “And not just any theater, but a really cool one that serves food and drinks to you in your seat!”

This was to be accomplished by Alamo Drafthouse, a Texas-based movie-theater chain whose president told the Rag, “There’s a need for additional screens up there…I’ve also got a real soft spot for old actual theater spaces that are no longer theater spaces. We look for spaces like that to try to renovate them.”

“Try” turned out to be the operative word. After a news hiatus of a year and a half, the Rag announced on October 1, 2013: “Alamo Drafthouse Cancels Plans to Open Upper West Side Movie Theater.”

The first sentence of the story was: “Sigh.”

The Texas company had come up against a New York reality: “The project to create a new five-screen moviehouse in the historic theater on Broadway between 99th and 100th streets was simply going to cost too much money,” the Alamo president told the Rag in a face-to-face interview.

Sometime after that, a rumor circulated that the Metro would become a Walmart. Not so, said then-City Councilmember Mark Levine, who told the Rag for a July 18, 2015 story that he’d heard “it will be a fitness outfit. They are in the final stages of lease negotiations.”

By now, the Rag had learned how to hedge the story, placing a strategic question mark at the end of its headline: “‘Fitness Outfit’ Coming to the Historic Metro Theater?” Levine hedged, too. “As you know many prior deals at the Metro have fallen apart last minute,” he told the Rag. “In fact, fitness company Planet Fitness had been close to signing a deal just a couple of months ago … but that deal fell apart.”

So did the new one Levine had talked about. Five years passed in news silence on the fate of the theater.

Then, on June 22, 2020, just a few months into the pandemic, when no one was going to the movies anywhere, the Rag announced, “‘Something Big’ Is Coming to the Historic Metro Theater as Owner Files New Permits.” Bialek, still the owner, was coy, “I can’t give you details, but we’re in advance talks, working very intensely on it,” he told the Rag. Celebrities were involved, he teased, “and it fits right in with the new zoning regulations …. It will be a very special use for the theater ….” With something of a wink and nod, he assured: “You’ll like it.” 

Three months later, on September 14, 2022, came the big reveal.

Remember the Alamo? An upscale offshoot funded by that company was planning to reopen the Metro “as a Multi-Screen, Dinner-Theater,” the Rag reported. All was moving along, despite some snags with the New York State Liquor Authority – until, in 2023, Albert Bialek died. Then, on April 4, 2024, the Rag dropped the bombshell, “Metro Theater Will Not Reopen as Upscale Dinner Cinema.” The reason? “The bankruptcy of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain.”

And so we come to 2025. What is different about this latest Metro reopening plan? Why should we believe it will succeed, given all the past disappointments?

“The biggest difference is that we own the theater now, we own the building,” said Ira Deutchman, co-founder with Adeline Monzier, of Upper West Side Cinema Center, the nonprofit organization that bought the Metro from Albert Bialek’s estate, in a phone conversation with the Rag. The organization received a $3.5 million grant from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, and $500,000 from the state Senate. They plan to create “a five-screen cinema arts and education center with a welcoming community bistro,” according to the group’s website.

Ironically, that is remarkably similar to what Albert Bialek originally envisioned for the building. 

“The long-vacant Metro Theater on 100th and Broadway could become a nonprofit arts center for students,” the Rag wrote back in 2011, linking to The New York Times, which added: “Mr. Bialek is in discussions to convert the Metro into a new home for Wingspan Arts…The proposal calls for four theaters, a dozen rehearsal spaces that can double as classrooms…and a cafe.”

“Maybe, finally, his dream is coming true,” Deutchman, a longtime independent film producer who co-founded the indie company Cinecom and created Fine Line Features, told the Rag. “What remains is raising enough money to actually build out what’s needed to make it what we want it to be. We don’t know the exact amount because the architects are still working on the plans, but $20 million is a good guess.”

It’s a substantial amount of money, he concedes, but remains hopeful.

“All the small donations we’re getting from people all over the neighborhood, not only does it add up, it’s ‘proof of concept,’ to anyone who might want to put major money into it, that the audience is there,” Deutchman contends. “We’ve already had more than 400 people donate from just the local area around the theater – and in the few days since we announced the purchase, a couple of hundred others have come in.” 

And, he added, “the city has already told us that we’re going to get some money from them like we got some from the state for the purchase. So we’re following up on that. It’s going to take however long it takes, but we’re committed to getting it done.”

Where have we heard that before?

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