By Noëlle de Leeuw
The Metro Theater name is no more. The nonprofit that will run the renewed art deco movie house on Broadway, between West 99th and 100th streets, revealed its new name at a Monday night event: the Uptown Film Center. It marks the beginning of a new chapter for the theater, formerly known as the Metro, the Midtown, and a handful of other names over the years.
“You never know how something’s going to go over,” said Ira Deutchman, president of the Upper West Side Cinema Center, the nonprofit that bought the building earlier this year, in a Zoom interview with West Side Rag. “Especially, given the fact that people in the neighborhood were so nostalgic about calling it the Metro all of the time.”
The new Uptown Film Center will have five movie screens, an educational center, and a cafe. The nonprofit hopes to break ground on construction in early 2027. If all goes according to plan, the film center would open to the public in 2028.
One of the five theaters within the new arts film center will hold around 185 seats, while another plans for 150, and the additional three are expected to each seat around 45 people.
Uptown Film Center will operate with a commitment to showing arthouse cinema, and not just Hollywood blockbusters.
“Nowadays, there’s a million choices. Why would somebody go to a movie theater?” Deutchman told the Rag. “It’s because we’re presenting something that’s different; that you can’t get on your tube at home or on your phone. It’s about the experience of going to see things that are a little bit outside of the mainstream.”
The Uptown Film Center has launched a $29 million capital campaign to build the theater. It hopes to have raised $5 million by the end of the year, which they’re currently around halfway to reaching, according to the group’s leadership.
The theater opened in 1933 as the Midtown Theater and has lived many lives since. In the 1970s it operated as an adult movie house, before becoming an arthouse cinema in the 1980s. The art deco landmark theater eventually closed its doors in 2005 and has been shuttered ever since. The interior was demolished a year later.
New leadership clarified that while the name would be changing, it planned to keep the pink terra-cotta facade at the front of the theater.
You can see more renderings of what the Uptown Film Center will look like, below.
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There’s no way in heck they can do all that work inside an old building that’s been deteriorating for 20 years in less than two years. Forget it.
Well, since it was a movie theater to begin with – so fewer changes need to be made – and only minor work needs to (or can be) done on the exterior, I think there is a good chance they can do what they plan.
Long-time followers of this topic will recall seeing photographs from a few years back of the interior which was substantially demolished. This interior needs major work of every kind.
As one of the funders, I can assure you it’s happening! 🙂
Good luck but as a construction pro, not in that time frame it isn’t.
Four years isn’t enough time to build a few theaters?!
Let’s hope its opening show is The Apartment, or Three Days of the Condor, which as significant scenes on Broadway in the 70s, not what’s on the screen in the rendering.
Then: How much of the $29 has been raised?
“New leadership clarified that while the name would be changing, it planned to keep the pink terra-cotta facade at the front of the theater.”
Right, the exterior is landmarked.
“The Uptown Film Center has launched a $29 million capital campaign to build the theater. It hopes to have raised $5 million by the end of the year…”
“Hopes” is the operative word here. I predict this will be no more successful than the so called arts group that tried to raise money to buy and repair the Presbyterian Church on W.86th St.
And what fraction of that 5 million dollars have they raised.? The year ends in 65 days; it’s not February.
Given that the “arts group” that has moved out of the Presbyterian Church was able to raise between $5 and $7 million, I don’t think raising $5 million for a new multi-plex arthouse theater is really going to be that difficult.
In fact, the five major celebs who supported the “arts group” at West-Park are worth a total of over $500 million, and they all contributed something to that total. If Uptown is able to get the support of a few local celebs (and there are MANY), along with others, they should be able to get that first $5 million fairly easily. It is the remaining $24 million that may be an issue.
This is such good news. The West Side’s many cinephiles and just plain movie lovers will flock to a caring non-profit that takes the art of moviemaking seriously, offering our neighborhood a combination of indie films, foreign films and retrospectives, along with the best of first-run films without super heroes, gore and deafening noise levels. Let’s all be generous donors to help make the vision a reality. I’ve heard that the place will be fully accessible, including assistive listening technology and scheduling of open-captioned showtimes for the deaf and hard of hearing.
100%. I miss the Metro so much
I see a LOT of steps; will there be an elevator for us oldies with rollators?
By law they are required to have one or the building will not be in compliance with ADA laws.
Yes, there will be an elevator
Fingers crossed!
I hope I’m still above ground before they break ground.
LOVE the name. Looking forward to catching a flick at The Uptown someday soon!
This will never open.
I’ll believe it when we see it. By now, the repeatedly broken promise of a rebirth of this theater reminds me of that football Lucy held for Charlie Brown. I would love to see this dream not be snatched away, but all the plan’s details add up to implausibility. No one is flocking to spaces like this, least of all in this neighborhood, and films of all kinds can in fact be easily accessed via streaming services and websites: that’s why those options have surged in popularity at the expense of “bricks and mortar.” All the uptown revival houses (Thalia, Regency etc) closed long ago. Community meeting places are certainly needed – that’s why the public library system is vitally important. But that’s not the need this impractical warren of medium-sized and tiny (45 chairs?) screening rooms addresses.
Information please on how to donate.
The people building this thing are billionaires. Donate to a public school.
Strange that these folks actually have some good branding and name recogniztion with “Metro” but chose to change it.
Mazda-Nissan anyone?
Mazal Tov anyone?
Meant to type Datson-Nissan. Yikes. See how important branding is?
Datsun was the correct spelling. I know, it was my client in the 1980s when Nissan funded the largest student filmmaking and screenwriting competition for college and university students in America. Funny you should bring them up.
It’s my understanding (I could be wrong) that there was some sort of trademark/tradename issue, as there is already a currently operating Metro Private Cinema in Chelsea. I assume that the old Metro was renamed to avoid what could have been a significant dispute over the rights.
Wow, an actually helpful comment. Thanks.
Agree. Very foolish to throw away that name recognition.
At the Corner of Hope and Scaffolding
Sunny:
They’ve launched the campaign — twenty-nine million!
At last the Uptown might glow like a pavilion.
Grimm:
Or flutter and fade, same as ever before —
that Coming Soon sign is the real décor.
Sunny:
There’s hope! They’ve raised a few million.
Grimm:
Just a hollow preview – same plot, new spin.
Sunny:
Picture it: paradiso, espresso, and laughter.
Grimm:
Picture it: ghost town, pigeons, and what’s after.
Sunny:
Dreams keep the city from turning to stone.
Grimm:
And fools like us from feeling alone.
Both:
Still, we wait for the reel that refuses to spin —
the show that flickers, but never begins.
😊
Glad to hear, but honestly, seeing is believing. After all, this may be plan #12396…? Would absolutely love to see it up and running, only that so far, every plan went nowhere, so I’ll hold my enthusiasm till the place actually reopens.
Actually, it is only the fourth plan for this space since it closed. And I prefer hope over cynicism any day.
29 million. Why aren’t the “investors “ putting up all the money? Why are they looking for outside funds? Who is going to donate big bucks unless they own it? New York State already sunk six million of taxpayer funds into this.
Many people donate to non-profits of all persuasions. Hospitals, artistic organizations, other things.
I wanna believe, but like others who live nearby, I’m a bit cynical at this point. To get people away from their widescreen TV’s, you need great sound and a BIG screen. Maybe not for every theater, but one or 2 of them. I don’t know how you fit 5 or even 3 decent theaters into that small space. (When the Metro remodeled before closing, they could barely fit 2.) Would love to know how screen sizes compare to other theaters like Metrograph, Film Forum (which also has some small screens), etc. These look tiny.
It’s NOT “…there’s a million choices “. It’s “There ARE…” please respect our language.
Show -off grammarian
This is fabulous news for the neighborhood and moviegoers all over The naysayers should look at the success of the Jacobs Burns Center in Pleasantville (the boondocks!) to see what this will bring to our neighborhood,
It would be nice if they got rid of the graffiti.
While it is true that other plans have been floated for this space, none of which came to fruition, so perhaps a bit of skepticism is understandable, I am nevertheless surprised and saddened by the the amount of negativity in the comments here.
Why not opt for hope over cynicism? Why not find out how we can all HELP this happen rather than assume it won’t?
I agree. Odd how cynical people are these days, but then again, The White House was just demolished and people are going hungry, so … that all might have something to do with it.
fair enough. On the opting for optimism side, the Avalon theatre in DC has been able to support a similar, chain-free indie-friendly reboot, and it’s a terrific asset to the neighborhood. But per my crabbier post earlier, I think the Avalon is a similar-sized space to the Uptown site, with only 2 screens. Really hoping one of these new theaters will have a screen big enough to do justice to epic classics like Gone With the Wind (as mentioned by others)?
Will they have the the classics .
Ten Commandments, Ben Hur. Gone with the Wind. So many good ones.
Yentil, ect
If they do this I will go.
Why can’t they just make simple modern no frills theaters for a couple of million and open up quickly, rather than an elaborate five year 29-million-dollar renovation? No one will be more likely to go. I don’t care if there is marble on the walls.
@Bill I am afraid that you are not up to date on what these things cost. The interior of this structure was substantially demolished by the previous owner. It will require millions and millions of dollars of work just to create an up-to-code space that people would be allowed to enter, sit on folding chairs, and watch movies projected onto a bed sheet. To make an actual modern theater with even a basic projection/sound system will easily require every bit of the $29 million they are talking about, if not more.
Then it should be torn down and an apartment building built there with street commercial
Yeah, because there’s so little available street commercial space on the Upper West Side. LOL.
Love the name! Fingers crossed for your success.
This looks great. Can’t wait to see it.
Why does it take so long to start reconstruction? It sounds like a pipedream? Why a name change?
I have visions of Charlie Brown and the football. No way that 2028 is the opening date. The economy is going to crater soon. The investors will pull out and it will be Rat Central for another 20 years.
I can’t find the comment again but I believe one of the people involved in the re-birth of the Metro said that the idea is to run old movies and art firms, Indies, and lower budget films to get people away from their TVs and out to the theater. . Actually, if much of the films to be shown are old movies, people need only turn on their TV and get old movies every night. So how does that get people out of bed and into a theater?
We need some good, cheerful movies mixed in there with bright colors and new movies we haven’t yet seen. How about some Rom-Coms? It doesn’t have to be geared to shoot
’em ups and car chases an adolescent
“thrillers,” but some good adult new fair.
And what happened to mysteries/who dunnits? Not where it ‘was all a dream,’ it was something supernatural, or sci-fi, or slasher films but a good old-fashioned mystery?!
If you can, I vote to keep the name Metro. Or some name that would highlight the upper West Side in it.
Whoa! This is way too nice for the UWS.
This thing is being built by billionaires and multi-millionaires! Why are they asking everyday people to donate money to their vanity project?