LAST PICTURE SHOW
Regal Cinemas will screen final films at Hudson Valley Mall tonight
Regal Cinemas 12, the movie theater multiplex in the Hudson Valley Mall, will close Thursday, according
to a sign at the theater.
“SORRY,” a sign at the movie theater marquee read on Tuesday, “CLOSING AUGUST 16.”
The last screenings listed for the theater are for Wednesday night, according to Fandango. com and Regmovies.com, sites
associated with Regal where moviegoers can purchase tickets.
Coles Doyle, marketing director for Georgia-based Hull Property Group, which owns the mall at 1300 Ulster Ave., could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
In April, when it was announced that Regal Cinemas would close by Aug. 31, Doyle had said that the company was in negotiations to bring in another theater operator but that
no deal to replace Regal had been reached.
“We want to work with another operator to come in and revive the theater and make investments and upgrades that will improve the experience for the moviegoer,” Doyle said at the time.
Doyle said the goal was to replace Regal Cinemas with another theater operator that will offer first-run movies, “not diminish it to a discount theater.”
The departure of Regal Cinemas comes on the heels of the mall’s Sears department store closing in April and continues a trend of large-tenant departures over the past several years. J.C. Penney left the mall in 2015, followed by Macy’s in 2016. Those two spaces, as well as
the Sears site, remain vacant.
In April, Doyle called the departure of Regal Cinemas “another obstacle” for Hull Property Group to overcome as it tries to revitalize the flagging mall, once a bustling retail hub.
Doyle said that since Hull purchased the mall in January 2017, it has made significant investments in the property, including new carpeting and other upgrades designed to improve the “shopper experience” and retain current tenants.
Regal, recently purchased by the British exhibition chain Cineworld, operates more than two dozen movie theater complexes in New York state. In the Mid-Hudson Valley, the company has multiplexes at South Hills Mall in the town of Poughkeepsie and the Fishkill Mall, both in Dutchess County, as well as the Hudson Valley Mall operation.