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Next week, the largest movie theater ever built in New York, the 25-screen AMC Empire in Times Square, will open for business. It will be followed by new multiplexes in downtown Brooklyn, Harlem and Battery Park City and on Staten Island.
Long known as a city with too few screens for its moviehungry population, New York is undergoing unprecedented expansion. While demand is expected to be high, the costs of building theaters here has skyrocketed. Experts wonder whether these ambitious ventures will actually make any money and whether they will end up driving older venues out of business.
"Everybody is sitting on the edge of their seat waiting to see what happens," says Sherri White, a managing director of Newmark & Co. Real Estate Inc., who has handled several theater deals.
Not enough seats
But theater companies say the numbers are in their favor. New York City, unlike the rest of the country, still doesn't have enough screens to go around. There's about one per 10,000 Americans, but only one per 19,000 in New York.
The gap Will certainly be closed by the construction boom.
39 screens on one block
AMC Entertainment Inc.'s showy Empire 25 multiplex on 42nd Street is the St. Louis, Mo.-based company's first theater in New York. Its opening follows last November's premiere of the equally stunning, 15-screen...