Regal Arbor, longtime Austin artwork home movie show, has closed – Austin American-Statesman

After virtually twenty years of screening motion pictures that you simply could not discover wherever else on the town, Austin’s Regal Arbor 8 has closed its doorways for good.

Regal Arbor 8 first turned on its projectors in October 2003.

“Thanks! It has been our pleasure to serve you at this theatre,” a discover posted to the cinema’s door, situated at 9828 Nice Hills Path, learn on Tuesday. “Regal Arbor @ Nice Hills is now closed.”

Based on listings final week, there weren’t any movies scheduled to display on the theater after Sept. 23. The marquee was clean and the theater was darkish and empty on Tuesday.

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The Regal chain’s father or mother firm, U.Ok.-based Cineworld Group, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. According to corporate real estate analysts Costar, the Arbor theater was amongst a slate of leases on unprofitable places within the chain set to be off-loaded as a part of the corporate’s monetary restructuring.

The Regal Arbor took over the area of the previous Nice Hills 8 theater, reopening it as an eight-screen theater with new carpet, seats and drapes and digital projectors all through. Its opening adopted the closure of close by Regal Arbor 7, which was pushed out to make means for the Cheesecake Manufacturing facility nonetheless working in that spot.

“The closure of the previous Arbor 7, unceremonious and largely unchallenged, was met by moans from art-film lovers who misplaced an oasis of international and indie movies in North Austin,” the American-Statesman reported in 2003.

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Regal Arbor 8 took up that mantle, screening “various titles, indies, restored classics and first-run international motion pictures,” in keeping with the Statesman. The theater opened with a sneak screening of “Mambo Italiano” and a sequence of Texas-tied movies, together with “Bottle Rocket” and “Pee-wee’s Huge Journey.”

Even on the time, such cinema was laborious to search out besides on the Arbor, now-shuttered Dobie Theatre and then-fledgling Alamo Drafthouse. With the closure of Regal Arbor 8, Austin Movie Society’s AFS Cinema is Austinites’ finest guess for locating such releases at this time, together with some screenings at downtown Violet Crown Cinema and the varied Drafthouse places, which additionally present mainstream releases.

The destiny of Regal Arbor 8 had been in query for years. In 2017, builders introduced a venture to revamp the Nice Hills Market web site, which was dwelling to the theater. Regal Arbor 8 and Mexican restaurant Manuel’s have been slated for demolition to make means for a mixed-use improvement. The house owners of Manuel’s in 2019 secured a lease renewal by way of the top of 2025, which was anticipated to maintain the theater protected from the wrecking ball for just a few years, too.

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After briefly shuttering amongst widespread pandemic closures in spring of 2020, Regal Arbor 8 reopened that fall.

The remaining Regal places in Austin are Gateway (9700 Stonelake Blvd. in North Austin), Westgate (4477 S. Lamar Blvd. in South Austin) and Metropolitan (901 Little Texas Lane in South Austin).