Joel EngelhardtThe old movie theater at Loehmann’s is gone and the rest of the center is undergoing demolition but development plans remain uncertain.
In the 1990s, before stadium-style seating took moviegoers by storm, Palm Beach Gardens had two cinemas offering 14 screens less than a mile apart along Alternate A1A.
One, the eight-screen United Artist theater, is now a Planet Fitness.
After sitting empty for years, the other, a six-screen theater, is entirely gone.
Workers demolished the 41-year-old PGA Cinema 6 as part of hotelier Drury Development’s plan to level the 41-year-old Loehmann’s Plaza.
Drury forced out tenants of the 14-acre site just southeast of PGA Boulevard and Interstate 95 in May after the city cited the company for a dozen code violations, The Palm Beach Post reported.
- Drury paid $16.5 million for the site in 2019.
In 2021, it pitched a 292-room Drury Plaza Hotel, restaurants, stores, an office building and a 315-unit apartment building. But the St. Louis-based developer withdrew its application and has nothing on file with the city.
How we got here: The original theater operator, General Cinema, shuttered the six-screen theater in 2000. It had a couple of runs as an art house cinema, the most recent in 2016, but has been empty ever since.
The center’s namesake, the Brooklyn-based discount clothing store Loehmann’s, moved in 2005 to neighboring Legacy Place and finally shut down in 2014. A TooJay’s Gourmet Deli left in 2005 for Downtown Palm Beach Gardens, only to be replaced by REI.
- A proposal for a BJ’s Wholesale Club met city opposition and went nowhere in 2012.
More recently: Loehmann’s Plaza housed an auction house, hair salon, a dance studio and a small Brazilian coffee house that survived a year or two next to the vacant movie theater before closing in 2023.
Bottom line: The plaza’s New York discount panache will soon give way to what surely will be a Palm Beach Gardens vibe.
Joel is a founder, reporter and editor at Stet News. His award-winning newspaper career spanned more than 40 years, including 28 years at The Palm Beach Post, which he left in 2020. Joel lives with his wife in Palm Beach Gardens. He volunteers on the board of NAMI Palm Beach County and the Palm Beach Gardens Historical Society.
