The 15-screen multiplex at 570 Second Avenue has been part of the walk-around routine for Murray Hill and Kips Bay since 1999, when it opened under the Loews banner before AMC took over in 2006. It carries the only IMAX screen left on Manhattan's East Side. It is AMC's second-largest theater in the borough, trailing only the Empire 25 in Times Square. And according to people who track its numbers, it has kept posting solid grosses even while the building itself showed its age.
The reported grosses did not prevent the closure. AMC confirmed on August 24 that the theater will close by the end of 2026, and the reason has nothing to do with ticket sales. The property owner exercised a contractual right to end AMC's lease before it was set to expire. That owner was NYU Langone, which had owned the site for more than a year before the lease termination became public.
Ownership of 570 Second Avenue
Assembly Member Keith Powers learned of the closure from the announcement, and his office confirmed NYU Langone's ownership history. City property records already listed NYU Langone Hospitals as the owner of 545 First Avenue, the adjacent parcel on the same tax block, so the health system already owned nearby property.
Murray Hill NYC reported that Powers put it plainly on social media after the news broke:
"This is a beloved movie theater in our community and personally, the one that I go to."
He wasn't alone in framing this as a neighborhood loss rather than a business failure. Seven elected officials, including Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler, State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, and City Councilmembers Virginia Maloney and Harvey Epstein, sent a joint letter to NYU Langone's CEO on August 27 asking for a meeting and more transparency about what happens next.
Kips Bay 15 would be the fourth screen the East Side has lost in recent years, joining the Beekman Theatre, City Cinemas 86th Street, and CMX CineBistro Lenox Hill on the list of multiplexes that used to be a short walk from home. Once it closes, the nearest AMC locations become Union Square or the 19th Street East 6, both a crosstown trip from Murray Hill rather than a stroll down Second Avenue.
The Coalition's Requests
The response has included coordinated outreach. Nine neighborhood, tenant, and block associations, among them the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association, the Alliance for Kips Bay, and the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association, sent their own letter to NYU Langone on August 31 under the name of the newly formed Save Kips Bay coalition. As reported by Murray Hill NYC, Jessica Lavoie, who chairs the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association's Quality of Life Committee, framed the stakes this way: when a major institution becomes a property owner in a residential neighborhood, it also becomes a neighbor.
Manhattan Community Board 6 held its first public hearing on the closure on September 9, taking registered testimony from residents. The coalition's letters list three requests:
- Preserve both the AMC and the Fairway Market that shares the retail complex
- Commit to public review of any rezoning or land-use application before it proceeds
- Meet directly with the nine signing organizations before finalizing plans for the site
CB6 has already indicated that converting the space to medical use, which a 2024 leasing brochure reportedly floated as one option, would trigger a rezoning requirement and the public review process that comes with it. That review has not been formally requested. NYU Langone has told local reporters it wants to expand health care access on the block and has said it is willing to talk with stakeholders, but has not announced specific plans for either the theater or the Fairway.
Community advocacy continued with a rally outside the theater, where elected officials and residents gathered and Assembly Member Micah Lasher addressed NYU Langone's role in the site's future. A separate Change.org petition has drawn close to 8,400 signatures, and the Save Kips Bay campaign has collected nearly 4,000 names of its own. No formal closing date has been set. The theater is expected to keep running through the end of the year while those conversations continue.
On East 39th Street, a Different Kind of Arrival
While one long-running tenant fights to stay on Second Avenue, a brand-new one just settled in on East 39th Street. Oyatte opened in May at 125 East 39th, the first solo restaurant from chef Hasung Lee, whose résumé reads like a tour of the places serious cooks talk about in hushed tones: Gramercy Tavern, three-Michelin-star Geranium in Copenhagen, two-Michelin-star Atomix in NoMad, and a stretch as sous chef under Thomas Keller at The French Laundry. Lee also spent last year competing as "Culinary Monster" on the second season of Netflix's Culinary Class Wars, finishing as runner-up among nearly a hundred chefs.
Oyatte seats just thirty people across two floors, and the entire menu runs through a single upstate farm. Crown Daisy Farm is run by Brett Ellis, The French Laundry's former head farmer, and the partnership goes beyond sourcing vegetables. Wood salvaged from the farm lines the staircase and paneling on the ground floor, which is built to feel like a farmhouse sitting room before guests move upstairs into two lighter, more minimalist dining rooms influenced by Lee's years in Copenhagen. A thirteen-foot quartz installation by Korean artist Bahk Seon Ghi connects the two levels. The eight-course tasting menu shifts week to week based on what Ellis is actually harvesting, which means fermentation and preservation aren't menu buzzwords here so much as a practical response to a supply chain that runs through one two-acre plot rather than a wholesale market.
It is a strange kind of symmetry for a single fall season. The theater that has anchored Murray Hill's evening routine for a quarter century is set to close by the end of 2026. On East 39th Street, a chef spent a decade building a résumé specifically so he could open on his own terms, in a room designed around a single farmer's harvest calendar. Neither story is really about entertainment or food. Both show how changes in the use of a space shape neighborhood life.
The Neighborhood That Keeps Showing Up for Its Own History
The same organization writing letters to NYU Langone's CEO has also organized a walking tour. The Murray Hill Neighborhood Association's Revolutionary Murray Hill tour, held in partnership with the Manhattan Borough President's office, traced the Battle of Kips Bay and the British invasion of Manhattan on September 15, 1776, exactly 250 years before this year's anniversary passed. The route followed the retreat of George Washington's army through what is now Midtown, and stopped at the site of Inclenberg, the estate that once stood near present-day Park Avenue and East 37th Street, where Mary Lindley Murray is remembered for delaying British officers with tea and conversation while American troops slipped away. The tour ended with a colonial tea reception and character portrayals rather than just a plaque and a pamphlet.
The same volunteer association that organized the history walk is the lead signatory on letters to a hospital system about the movie theater's future. Murray Hill's civic life doesn't split neatly into heritage programming on one side and neighborhood advocacy on the other. The association's work spans both, including its response to the AMC closure.
The United Nations General Assembly's busiest stretch ran Monday, September 21 through Friday, September 25, with the usual detours and checkpoints near the East River layered on top of other activity in the neighborhood that week. It was the kind of overlapping disruption Murray Hill residents have learned to read around rather than be surprised by.
What remains open is what NYU Langone will do with 570 Second Avenue. The health system has said it is interested in expanding health care access and is willing to speak with local stakeholders, and the elected officials and neighborhood groups involved have asked to be part of that conversation before any plans are finalized.
If you're trying to make sense of how a change like this might ripple through property values or plans on a specific Murray Hill block, Eileen Foy has spent three decades reading exactly these kinds of shifts on the East Side. A conversation costs nothing and might save you some guessing.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
