Denver's Spate Of Movie Theater Closures Draws Redevelopment Interest
A wave of movie theater closures across metro Denver has attracted attention from developers looking for promising locations for their next project in the city where land has reached a premium.
But converting those theaters is a complicated proposition.
“There’s a very specific use for a movie theater,” said Eric Holt, associate professor at the Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management at the University of Denver.
“The layout, the large theater gathering spaces, the tiered seating, the high ceilings. So, it’s not like they can be easily converted into another use,” he told Bisnow.
Five theaters have closed in the Denver area since 2023, including some of the city’s most beloved. The attachment some in the city have to their local theaters can also pose a development hurdle beyond the property's physical characteristics.
The owners of the Esquire, a 96-year-old theater that was shuttered earlier this year, submitted a plan in 2023 to redevelop the 9K SF building into office space and retail use. The Esquire’s location at 590 N. Downing St. places it on the edge of Capitol Hill and Cheesman Park, two fast-growing areas popular with young professionals.
But the theater was also a beloved community hub for generations of Denverites, and its potential redevelopment set off a protest among the Esquire’s die-hard fans. Eventually, the building’s ownership settled on a redevelopment plan that was approved by the Denver Landmark Preservation Commission with support from the neighborhood association.
Sam Leger of Franklin 10 LLC, which owns the Esquire property, declined to comment for this story.
Other recent Denver-area theater closures include Chez Artiste, which opened in 1972 and was known for its independent and foreign films before its curtain call earlier this month. Last year, Cineworld, the UK-based parent company of Regal Cinemas, closed three movie theaters in metro Denver following Regal’s bankruptcy and restructuring: Meadows Stadium 12 in Littleton as well as the Southglenn Stadium 14 and the 800-seat Regal Continental, both in Centennial.
In April, Century Living, a part of Greenwood Village-based Century Communities, issued a proposal to replace the Regal Continental with two four-story apartment buildings on the 6.9-acre lot, according to The Denver Post.
The 467K SF project would include 417 apartments and a total of 439 parking spaces, the Post reported. A representative for Century declined to comment.
Tearing down the buildings would sidestep the structural elements of theaters that make them difficult to repurpose.
Structures like the Regal Continental, which was built in the 1960s, were mostly constructed of concrete to adhere to local fire ratings and zoning regulations, making their reconfiguration particularly difficult, Holt said.
“Even with a retail space and a restaurant, that’s still a challenge,” he said, “because there’s no commercial kitchen. You’ve got to run service lines, duct work, gas lines and drain lines through concrete. It quickly becomes non-economically viable.”
Redeveloping movie theaters is likely to persist as a potential route for developers, with theaters taking their last bow across the country.
From 2019 to 2023, the total theater count in the U.S. declined by around 6.5%, according to Brian Moriarty, senior vice president of corporate communications for EPR Properties, a Kansas City-based REIT that specializes in entertainment properties like theaters.
The past several years have been challenging for movie theaters, between the Covid-mandated shutdowns, the growth of consumers using video streaming and the Hollywood writers and actors strikes, which put a hold on movie production and delayed many movie releases. Studios have been slower to recover than expected after the strikes.
