Former Gallery’s movie and entertainment centers to open two months after the mall’s rebirth

Visitors to the former Gallery at Market East shopping mall will have to wait a couple months longer than previously announced to see a movie or sing some karaoke at the soon-to-be reborn Center City retail and entertainment destination.

The Fashion District Philadelphia’s shopping areas will open in September, but its AMC Theatre cinema and Round One entertainment venue won’t open until November, Joseph Coradino, chief executive of the mall’s co-owner, Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, said during a conference call with analysts Friday.

Philadelphia-based PREIT, which co-owns the property with Macerich of Santa Monica, Calif., said last year that the mall would open all at once in September 2019. Before that, its first phases had been set to open in late 2018.

The mall will be about 70 percent occupied when it finishes reopening in November, although that number is projected to rise to about 90 percent by mid-2020, Coradio told analysts.

PREIT and Macerich began work on the transformation of the former Gallery’s 650,000 square feet of retail space between Market and Filbert Streets, bounded by Eighth and 11th Streets, in October 2016.

When it reopens, its retail tenants are to include H&M, Asics, and Levi Strauss & Co. Oath Pizza, Chick-fil-A and BurgerFi are to be among the vendors at its food court.

PREIT spokesperson Heather Crowell said that the movie theater and Round One space — which will feature arcade games, billiards, bowling, karaoke and other activities — are opening behind the other tenants “due to the complicated construction associated with the theater and having to raise the roof” in the section of the building they will occupy between 10th and 11th Streets.

Also planned at the mall is a City Winery concert venue planned that will open alongside its retail tenants in September.