News

Playhouse Theater to reopen

Mamaroneck’s historic Playhouse Theater will be renovated for a new era in the village’s downtown business district after being purchased by a New York City-based developer.

According to a statement from Royal Properties, who brokered the deal transferring the building from Bow Tie Cinemas to Blue Zees Real Estate, the new owners plan to reopen the long-vacant Playhouse in the fall of this year as a six-screen theater, marking the first time since 2014 that the 17,000- square-foot building will be open to the public.

Though the theater has existed since 1925, when it was originally used as a single-screen theater playing silent films, it was renovated once in the 1970s to include four separate theaters—two on the top floor and two on the bottom.

The building also retains an original facade, lobby, auditorium walls, and a 12 dressing rooms that accompanied a theater stage for vaudeville performances.

Plans to reopen the building—located at 243 Mamaroneck Ave.—as a theater come as a change of direction for Bow Tie Cinemas, which planned to redevelop the building, making way for a large-scale retail development in 2016.

The sale and renovation of the theater also marks the continuation of a trend of revamping historic theaters in Westchester County that started with another Playhouse Theater located in the village of Larchmont.

Developer, Charles Cohen, purchased the Larchmont Playhouse in 2017, with plans to reopen the venue as a theater for independent and foreign films.

The Larchmont Playhouse has been closed since 2016, after Bow Tie Cinemas declined to renew its lease on the Palmer Avenue property.

-Reporting by James Pero