The Pavilion will close at the end of October, to be replaced by a theater called Nitehawk Prospect Park. Nitehawk Cinema will completely renovate the existing building and make it into a seven-screen, 650-seat movie theater with an accompanying restaurant and bar, scheduled to open in the early fall of next year.
The theater is located at 188 Prospect Park West, between 14th and 15th streets.
Nitehawk's other Brooklyn theater is in Williamsburg. It opened in 2011.
The Pavilion's predecessor, The Sanders Theater, opened in 1928 under the ownership of The 15th Street Amusement Company. The Sanders was named for its owners, Harry and Rudolph Sanders. Prior to that, the Marathon Theater, a nickelodeon also owned and operated by Harry and Rudolph Sanders (1908 to 1927), stood on that spot. When the Marathon was torn down, the Sanders was built.
The once-vibrant Sanders laid empty from 1978 to 1996, to the despair of its neighbors. Would it become a co-op? Would it become stores? Neither. It continued to be a theater. In 1996, it became the Pavilion Theater, owned by Norman Adie and John and Phil Castaldi.
Hidrock Realty bought the theater's property and the property next to it (192 Prospect Park West, formerly Circles restaurant) in 2006, with a plan to build luxury condos. Instead, the site will remain a movie theater, one with "a double kitchen, two bar areas, a restored atrium overlooking the park, and in-theater dining."
Read more about these new plans in an article in The New York Times.
