Loews Cineplex Cinema 5
183-15 Horace Harding Boulevard,
Fresh Meadows,
NY
11365
183-15 Horace Harding Boulevard,
Fresh Meadows,
NY
11365
4 people
favorited this theater
Originally built in 1984 by an independent who also owned the Arion, Surfside Twin and other local houses, he converted a former Bohack supermarket into Cinema City 5. The theatre located on the service road of the Long Island Expressway featured a huge mural on its front of Hollywood legends like Elizabeth Taylor, Charlie Chaplin and Judy Garland. Instead of one marquee there were five small ones each containing the title of the film in that auditorium.
The theatres themselves were not first rate, being long and narrow but the place was an immediate hit. When Cineplex aquired the Century Meadows and announced plans to gut and multiplex it, the owner panicked and put it up for sale. Cineplex not wanting competition bought it. They now had 13 screens in Fresh Meadows between the two.
A few years later they re-modeled Cinema City and renamed it Cinema 5. The whole place was spruced up and given the Cineplex flair with pink neon and marble floors. The mural though had seen better days and instead of replacing it with a big sign or something flashy they painted it black.
The theater closed in 2004 and was demolished in spring of 2005.
Contributed by
Robert R
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Recent comments (view all 40 comments)
No wonder there are no pictures if it was so bad.
Pics are up.
There homes taking up the property. You ’ll never know there was a theater once there.
fred1: I just did a Google Street View at that address and it seems like it is still an walled-off empty lot. My wife and I saw a movie there in the late ‘90s. It was a real dump and poorly lit outside. Scary place to go at night.
Some Google street views were taken 3-4 years ago
While the construction fencing is still there along Horace Harding, one can clearly see that a series of attached townhomes have been built on the site. The homes face the side and back streets of the parcel, making backyards out of the former parking lot. The structures look pretty well complete. I imagine that with the weather warming up around here, they will probably finish off the details and landscaping in the coming weeks and months.
This was one of the few supermarkets that ever got converted into a cinema. Usually it was a cinema that became a supermarket.
Island in Mastic is another. Seaford was a Department Store.
I know of many many many supermarkets that became a theatre. Was probably more common before stadium seating though.
I worked at this dump of a place for about a year starting in 1988 thru 1989. While I was there we got the worst of the worst as far as movies were concerned. I remember the movie Beaches played almost the whole time I worked there. I did have a great time while I worked there.