Thomas Breen photo
It's official: Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas will permanently close next month.
New Haven’s last remaining commercial movie theater will go dark for good after Oct. 12, bringing to a close roughly two decades of screenings on Temple Street downtown.
In an email statement provided to the Independent on Tuesday afternoon, Bow Tie Partners Vice President of Operations Brooke Sugaski confirmed that the nine-screen theater at 80 Temple St. — which opened in 2004 — will close permanently after its evening screenings on Thursday, Oct. 12. (Indispensable local Tweeter DFA New Haven first reported the news earlier on Tuesday.)
The closure announcement comes less than two months after the Independent reported that the Bow Tie was considering shuttering the Criterion Cinema in part because of a hit to its local movie theater business during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bow Tie Partners, the New York City-based “real estate investment and entertainment company” that runs the downtown movie theater, will be “pursuing a redevelopment of the space currently occupied by Criterion Cinemas,” the official statement reads. The movie theater sits on the ground floor of an upscale apartment building also owned by an affiliate of Bow Tie Partners.
“Criterion Cinemas opened in 2004 and has proudly entertained the people of New Haven for almost 20 years,” Tuesday’s statement reads. “Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic caused dramatic changes to the movie theater business in markets such as New Haven, and as a result, the business is no longer viable.”
The statement continues: “Bow Tie Partners plans to remain part of the downtown New Haven community and is currently evaluating multiple scenarios for redevelopment of the movie theater space, several of which include new entertainment offerings. Temple Square Apartments will continue to operate unchanged and may benefit from conversion of portions of the former movie theater space into additional amenities.”
“We offer our sincere thanks and appreciation to all of our loyal customers who, over the past 19 years, have seen over 2,000 films at Criterion Cinemas,” Bow Tie Partners CEO Ben Moss is quoted as saying in the press release. “We are very much looking forward to remaining a part of the vibrant and exciting downtown New Haven business community and look forward to announcing our future plans when we have finished our analysis of alternative uses.”
Asked for comment from the city’s perspective, city Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli said, “We value Bow Tie Partners’ two decades in New Haven and look forward to working with them on future plans. As a general point, we have talked about potential collaborations which support cultural equity and the vitality of Downtown and look forward to future conversations along these lines.”
The Temple Street movie theater closed for roughly a year and a half at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, reopening for screenings in August 2021.
Its closure comes roughly a year after the decades-old independent movie theater Ciné 4 on Middletown Avenue shut down and was bought by a local childcare nonprofit.
It also comes around a year and a half after Bow Tie sold five movie theaters in Stamford, Norwalk, and Trumbull to AMC Entertainment.
The Bow Tie movie theater on Temple Street is the last remaining commercial cinema in the city that regularly shows new releases. The only other movie screening operations in town are at Yale, which regularly hosts free screenings of film classics, and at the Fairmount movie theater in the Annex, an “adult” cinema that screens pornographic movies only.
In the Bow Tie Criterion's front lobby after pandemic reopening in August 2021.
In the Fairmount's front lobby, in August 2023.
Bummer. You've been a good friend, Bow Tie.