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.
