Empress Walk 10 Cinemas shuts down

The abrupt closure of Empire Theatres Ltd.’s Empress Walk 10 Cinemas in North York doesn’t mean Empire is leaving the Toronto market, company president and CEO Stuart G. Fraser says.

“We’re not pulling out of the market, we’re not pulling out of the business . . . The landlord wanted us to terminate our lease and we took advantage of it,” Fraser told the Star on Friday from his head office in New Glasgow, N.S. “The theatre was underperforming and didn’t represent the brand that we want to represent in the marketplace, unlike the ones that we have in other parts of the country.”

Empress Walk 10, located at 5095 Yonge St. across from Mel Lastman Square, closed Thursday night after the day’s final screenings concluded. A note on the theatre’s website announces the closure and thanks patrons “for experiencing the movies with us.”

Fraser said the shuttering means “about 20 or 25” people are losing their jobs, but “we’ll try to relocate as many as we can. We have a theatre out in Square One Mississauga that’s still going. We also have one in Elgin Mills in Richmond Hill.”

The Empress Walk closure means Empire no longer has a theatre in the city of Toronto, but that situation could change, Fraser said.

“We’re always looking . . . we’ve got four projects under construction across the country right now.”

Based in the Maritimes, Empire is Canada’s largest second-largest cinema chain with its 52 theatres, behind Ontario-based Cineplex Entertainment. Empire acquired the Empress Walk theatre in 2005, as part of a nationwide consolidation of movie-theatre ownership.

The company on Thursday also closed its three-screen Rideau Centre facility in downtown Ottawa, but that one is being replaced with a new theatre Empire is building in the city’s Lansdowne Park area, Fraser said.