Lincoln Plaza Cinemas Update

The online petition to save Lincoln Plaza Cinemas now has over 11,000 signatures. Paper petitions are also circulating and gathering names. Every day, customers ask what they can do to protest the closure. But the closure is coming--in just a couple of weeks. Milstein Properties has not offered a new lease.

Before the new year, Dan Talbot passed away. He'd been running Lincoln Plaza with his wife, Toby, since 1981.



This week, West Side Rag talked with Toby. As it stands, she will not be part of Howard Milstein's plans for the site, which reportedly include upgrades and a new movie theater, possibly something run by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Possibly not.

On her wish to keep the theater going, Toby said:

“Of course I would like to continue running it. And one of the things that grieves me — grieves is hardly even a strong enough word — is that the people who’ve been working with us — and I say not ‘for’ us, but ‘with’ us, some for 35 years — are so devoted, I just hate to think of them suddenly being out of jobs. The people on our staff come from all over the globe. It’s a United Nations down there. It’s a harmonious place, run with a very hands-on perspective. I’ve been the one who has chosen everything at the confection stand. Almost every pastry comes from a different place.”



And on the chance of saving it?

“The only thing that could possibly be done,” Toby said, “is if significant political pressure is exerted by our elected officials, saying this isn’t a matter of just economics, but of a cinema culture that has been established for three-and-a-half decades in that spot, with people who are very bereft to be deprived of it.”


photo via West Side Rag

Please sign the petition and write to your local politicians, asking them to get involved. City Council Member Helen Rosenthal, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, State Senator Brad Hoylman, and Assemblymember Richard Gottfried recently sent this letter to Milstein:


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