17-screen movie theater is coming back to Riverview in South Philadelphia

Bart Blatstein is bringing the movies back to South Philadelphia.

The founder and CEO of Tower Investments says that he plans a 17-screen theater for the Riverview Plaza, the same number the property hosted until 2020 when the previous theater was shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The theater, to me, it was always the highest and best use for that block,” Blatstein said Wednesday. “And the demographics are amazing. They were amazing when I opened it 30 years ago. They’re even better now. There’s a lot of kids now back in South Philly, in Center City.”

Blatstein plans to redevelop the site at 1100 S. Christopher Columbus Blvd. by himself, unlike recent partnerships with the Post Brothers or Prime Space Capital where he provided the property for others to develop.

The rejuvenated Riverview will include two restaurant spaces and another “small entertainment use.” He said construction would begin at the end of this year, and he anticipated completion by the close of 2025.

Blatstein previously had conversations with Dave & Busters about moving its location farther up Christopher Columbus Boulevard to the site, but that is no longer part of the plan. “I believe they are staying where they are,” he said.

The new Riverview would be the largest theater in South Philadelphia and Center City. Currently that honor is held by the AMC Theater in the Fashion District, but that eight-screen, top-of-the-line theater will be demolished if the Philadelphia 76ers’ new arena gets built on East Market Street. Otherwise competition is limited to the Ritz Five and the Philadelphia Film Society’s theaters in Center City, which feature first run as well as arthouse and vintage fare.

When Blatstein originally opened the Riverview Theater in the 1991, the nine-screen movie complex was seen as an unusual play for that corner of the city. At that point, little new development was occurring in South Philadelphia. Blatstein recalls not being able to sleep the night before it opened.

But the theater was successful and he added two more screens later that year and then an additional six. The earlier iteration of the theater was most recently run by Regal United Artists, which shuttered it as part of a larger wave of closures in 2020.

Blatstein said he doesn’t fear that big screen cinema is a thing of the past in the age of TikTok. He has faith that audiences still have an appetite for big tentpole films like Top Gun: Maverick — a recent favorite of his — and for smaller budget crowd pleasers like horror films.

“There was COVID and a writers strike, but people still love going to the movies,” Blatstein said. “Don’t forget that when a good movie comes out, it sells like crazy.”

The new theater will be run by Apple Cinema, a modestly sized company that runs 136 screens across New England and New York.

“They’re a small chain, but they’re financially very stable, very strong,” Blatstein said. “They’re not laden with debt like the other [movie theater] companies. They haven’t got the bankruptcies like the other companies.”

Although Blatstein developed the Riverview in the late 1980s and opened the theater in 1991, he sold it to Cedar Realty Trust 10 years later. In 2019 the company had big plans to rejuvenate the theater and build a million square feet of retail and residential uses on the site.

Then the pandemic struck, and Cedar Realty Trust fell apart. Blatstein purchased the property back in 2022.

Blatstein emphasized that this new theater is not just a business play. This time, it’s personal.

“I’m putting a theater back selfishly, for me, because I want a theater, too. I live in town,” said Blatstein, who lives on Rittenhouse Square. “You couple that with the fact that it was the highest performing theater in the region in its day, and now there’s tremendous density in that region.”