Potential tenants have shown interest in renting the 76-year-old Miami Beach Roosevelt Theater, Mayor Steven Meiner said Friday – but the interest isn’t from scarce cinema operators.
The future of the theater building at 770 Arthur Godfrey Road has been on the city’s formal agenda since May 2024, when commissioners voted unanimously to have the administration reach out to help resurrect the long-shuttered Roosevelt, either as a movie house or some other use that would spur 41st Street activity.
Mr. Meiner, who said he speaks with the building owner periodically, told Miami Today that a high-end night dinner venue and another high-end restaurant have shown interest in being tenants, but “there hasn’t been anything that’s closed.”
“It’s privately owned, so, from a government perspective, we keep the dialogue open and try to send him interested tenants,” the mayor said. “He’s got people approaching him as well… It would be a big win for the city of Miami Beach and certainly 41st Street [if] we can reactivate that venue.”
While there’s no confirmation of any negotiations, Mr. Meiner added that revitalizing the theater could transform 41st Street and he hopes to get it done.
“I was actually looking at some pictures that I had gotten from decades ago of what the Roosevelt Theater looked like inside, and it’s magnificent,” he said. “It shows you the possibility and the ability to reclaim that charm of the Roosevelt Theater would be transformational to 41st Street.”
The mayor said the “excitement happening on 41st Street right now” could help the theater and the future tenant that potentially moves in. Restaurants and high-end office space coming to 41st Street can make the Roosevelt Theater more attractive, he said.
“I think, taken as a whole,” Mr. Meiner said, “what you can see is happening here is a couple of really good restaurants and then you have an office building with high-end clients, which I think is going to further feed the ecosystem of more restaurants, which I think is all exciting for 41st but also could be an impetus to get a client to say, ‘Hey, this is a great opportunity to come into Miami Beach.”
The Roosevelt Theater made a splash in the city when it opened in December 1949 with “Battleground,” featuring Van Johnson, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban and George Murphy, but “it’s been closed for decades,” the mayor noted in June. “The building definitely needs some considerable work. There’s an expense involved in that.”
City commissioners in May 2024 originally directed the administration to meet with the property owner to discuss the opportunity for the city to buy the building, but the resolution was amended to see how to advance the redevelopment process.
“Anybody who’s been here their entire life understands that prior to having large movie theater conglomerates, every single street – 125th Street, 71st Street, 41st Street, Fifth Street – they all had smaller community movie theaters,” said then-Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez at the time. “Lincoln Road, we’re losing, obviously, AMC.”
Commissioner Alex Fernandez said then he was concerned by a property that is not well-maintained, “property that is not activated, especially … property that is … architecturally significant like this. This is a post-war medieval building from the 1940s. It’s a gem of 41st Street, and it’s been left to deteriorate there, and we’ve seen other properties in our city like that.”
Were it up to her, Ms. Rosen Gonzalez said, the city would buy the Roosevelt and lease it to a theater operating company, “somebody who has experience, and they’re going to have to invest some money in it.”
Miami Beach’s concerns about a commercial movie theater became more acute this year as its last one remaining, the Regal South Beach Cinema, began leasing its 1120 Lincoln Road Mall site on a monthly basis and the city planning board approved plans to replace the cinema with an immersive art museum called the Superhuman Museum.
Concerns about the state of the Regal had already been swirling – in December 2024, commissioners directed the city manager to inquire, citing broken seats and lack of menu items in what had become the city’s last picture show.
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