Kevin O'Keefe

In late August, it was announced that the Kips Bay AMC 15 would close at the end of this year after 27 years of operation on Second Avenue. With box-office sales down long-term, ticket prices up, and movie theaters closing in rapid succession since COVID, the site will be taken over by one of the actually growing industries in America: health care. NYU Langone Health, which has expanded in the tristate area by 376 percent since 2007, is expanding a bit more, occupying the theater for what it has described as clinical space for patient care. When residents learned of the AMC’s closure, they were outraged by the encroachment of yet another medical office — and called on their elected officials to save the theater. “They’re going to keep creeping into Kips Bay, and it’s going to be just a boring place to live,” says Jack Greenberg, a programmer who lives a few blocks from the theater. There are people who say replacing a movie theater with a health-care facility is a good thing, and some have mocked the local politicians who are seizing on the issue. But community members say it shouldn’t have to be a conflict of movies against medicine. “It’s about whether Kips Bay, the community, can remain a neighborhood or just slowly become a medical campus,” says Kevin O’Keefe, president of the local St. Vartan Park Conservancy, who also serves on the Bellevue Hospital community-advisory board. “But it’s broader than that. Mental health comes into this.” He points to the crisis of loneliness that has taken hold at least since the pandemic. “Having a movie theater helps to alleviate that,” he says. “Nobody’s arguing against health care. We’re just saying a healthy neighborhood needs more than health care.” Read Matt Stieb’s report on the battle over the AMC in Kips Bay: nymag.visitlink.me/AtnyWZ