Thursday is the last day of screenings at the Century 9 theater in the Westfield San Francisco Centre, as another tenant is bailing on the shopping mall that owner Westfield Corporation is also walking away from.
It may be fallout from Monday’s bombshell announcement that the Westfield Corporation was surrendering the Westfield Centre mall to its lender and abandoning the property. Or it may be the terrible business environment for movie theaters, particularly the large movieplex theater chains that used to dominate the industry.
And maybe it’s a combination of both, as KGO first reported early Thursday morning that the Cinemark-owned Century 9 Theater in the Westfield mall is closing permanently, a report since confirmed by multiple other outlets.
KGO’s report did not have much detailed information, and just said that the station “received a screenshot of an email sent by Cinemark to its customers announcing the theater's closure after Thursday.” But a look at the theater’s website shows no screenings past Thursday, June 15.
Hours after KGO published their report, the Chronicle got confirmation from a Cinemark representative that the theater is indeed closing Thursday. That spokesperson said Cinemark came to the decision “following a comprehensive review of local business conditions.”
The Chronicle also notes that the movie theater, whose technical name is the extremely not-catchy “Century San Francisco Centre 9 and XD,” has its lease expiring this September. The mall’s largest tenant, Nordstrom, at 312,000 square feet, has already announced they’re closing at the end of August.
Cinemark had also been the owner and operator of the CineArts Empire theater in West Portal, which closed in February 2021, and was SF’s first movie theater to close during the pandemic.
Elsewhere in the city, we also lost another large movie theater this year, the former AMC Van Ness that briefly became the CGV San Francisco 14. It permanently closed in March.
Image: Lambert P. via Yelp
