West Nursery Cinemas, a staple in Linthicum for nearly 25 years, has “closed for business,” according to a message on the theater’s phone line.
The theater, which opened as Hoyts West Nursery Cinema 14 in 1998, served Linthicum’s Airport Square Technology Park near BWI Marshall Airport for nearly a quarter century.
On Tuesday, the theater’s website offered no future showtimes or movies coming soon. Messages sent to the theater’s social media pages were not returned.
The 57,300-square-foot building opened to much fanfare at a cost of $8.5 million, The Baltimore Sun reported in March 1998. It had more than 2,700 seats in 14 auditoriums that featured stadium seating “arranged on an increasingly steeper incline to give every viewer a clear sight line,” according to The Sun.
Hoyts, based in Australia and New Zealand, was acquired by Regal Cinemas in 2003, but the Linthicum theater retained its original logo and name.
The closure follows a difficult three years for the movie theater industry after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered theaters for months, many of which never reopened. Some of those that did have changed hands and rebranded.
In April, AMC Theaters acquired the Westfield Annapolis Mall theater from Bow Tie Cinemas. The acquisition of the 11-screen theater was part of a larger deal with Bow Tie Cinemas to purchase and operate seven locations in Connecticut, upstate New York and Annapolis, AMC said in a news release.
Also in April, Landmark Theatres announced it would be bringing movies back to the Annapolis Harbour Center taking the former location of the shuttered Bow Tie Cinemas Harbour 9.