A Development Proposal 34 Years in the Making

"Community board members in Flushing are once again faced with a new development proposal at the site of the historic RKO Keith’s theater, the latest plan in a halting, decades-long attempt to repurpose the site of the grand movie palace," reports David Brand.

"Property owner Xinyuan Real Estate has submitted an application to the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals to build 173 condominiums and 162 hotel rooms in a 16-story tower that would rise above the theater facade," according to Brand. 

China-based Xinyuan Real Estate bought the property in 2016, according to Brand, and in 2019 was reportedly moving forward with a plan to demolish the theater and replace it with 269 condominiums. 

"The new proposal also includes more retail square footage and double the space set aside for an undisclosed 'community facility,' according to materials presented to the Queens Community Board 7 Land Use Committee Wednesday. Xinyuan has said they could complete the project by January 2023."

The theater closed down in 1986, and has faced numerous occasions of imminent development and demolition across the decades, spurring local advocates to fight to protect the theater as a site of significant cultural history, but the theater itself was never landmarked, according to a March 2019 article by Van Tieu. 

As noted in the most recent article about the theater and the developers' plans to remake the location, previous developers have always managed to profit on the failure by selling to the next developer willing to give the location a shot.