Group Forms to Help Neglected Queens Theater
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | Mar. 12, 2009
Bob Hope once called the RKO Keith's in Flushing, Queens, "the most beautiful theater in the world."
With a fountain in its lobby and ornate Moorish details, RKO Keith's Theater in Queens, N.Y., was the talk of the town when it opened in 1928. Now the movie palace has reclaimed the limelight, thanks to a new group that formed last month to help the dilapidated theater.
Brooklyn-based Boymelgreen Developers, which has owned the 43,000-square-foot theater since 2002, is offering it for sale for $24 million. The foyer and grand lobby are protected as city landmarks, but the auditorium—which has been gutted—is not.
Designed by Thomas W. Lamb, RKO Keith's suffered substantial damage after it closed in 1986. Earlier this month, a drunk driver crashed into its facade. The theater's former owner, Tommy Huang, pleaded guilty in 1997 after the state attorney general's office charged him for deliberately destroying parts of the auditorium. (He was fined $5,000 and put on probation.)
Last week, a new group had its first meeting to discuss ways to reuse the battered building. Friends of the RKO Keith's wants the theater rejuvenated as a performing arts center, perhaps with a condo tower. The group is following in the footsteps of the Committee to Save the RKO Keith's Flushing, Inc., which formed in 1980.
"We're going to pick up the torch where the committee started 25 years ago [left off], and maybe with the Internet we'll get farther," says Ed Tracey, who started Friends of the RKO Keith's last month. "Thanks to Facebook, in two weeks we got more than 1,000 people vowing support."
The group is in the process of creating a not-for-profit and trying to raise "a lot of cash," Tracey says. He hopes to involve celebrities like Nancy Reagan, John Williams, Fran Drescher, and Lucy Liu, all of whom grew up in Flushing, near the theater.
Visit Friends of RKO Keith's on Facebook
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