A revitalized Loew’s Kings Theater is going to make traffic worse on nearby streets, and the city admits it can’t fully solve the problem.
The study by the Economic Development Corporation, which is overseeing the redevelopment of the long-shuttered movie house, says that car trips to the 3,600-seat theater on Flatbush Avenue near Tilden Avenue — scheduled to reopen late in 2013 — will create congestion at 13 intersections on the 200 days a year when there is a performance.
At four of those intersections, including the notoriously congested Church and Flatbush avenues, Bedford Avenue and Linden Boulevard, Church and Bedford avenues, and Flatbush and Bedford avenues, the city says there is nothing it can do about the overwhelming traffic at certain times.
The project’s developer shrugged off the local impact of the project to turn the decades-old theater into a neighborhood jewel.
“It is what it is,” said David Anderson, the president of Ace Theatrical Group, which won a 30-year contract to renovate and operate the theater last year.
According to the city’s analysis, 922 vehicles would be added to area roadways on Saturdays at midday and evening arrival times, and 1,092 cars would be added to already clogged streets on Saturdays, during the busiest midday departure hour.
Changes to affected intersections would reduce or eliminate most of the problems, according to the analysis of the $70-million project, which cites “signal timing changes, parking regulation changes to gain or widen a travel lane at key intersections, lane markings and signage” as the strategies that would be used by the city to minimize congestion.
Neighbors said they were more than happy to deal with a little pain for a lot of gain.
“It’s something we have to live with,” said Zenobia McNally, whose house is behind the Kings. “The restoration of the Kings is so wonderfully fantastic that it must go forward.”
Rickie Tulloch, who lives nearby, agreed.
“The benefits derived from the theater are going to be exponentially greater than the inconvenience of the traffic,” he said. “I think it will do wonders for the neighborhood because it will help to revitalize Flatbush Avenue. It’s totally positive.”
The theater, which has been closed since the late 1970s — slowly but surely blighting an area it once illuminated — opened as the Loew’s Kings movie house just a month before the start of the Great Depression in 1929. It was designed by Rapp & Rapp with details reminiscent of the palace at Versailles as well as the Paris Opera.
The city first tried to redevelop the theater back in 1998, as a multiplex cinema. That effort failed and the theater lay fallow until 2006, when the latest redevelopment effort was launched.