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It's official: the beloved Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Brooklyn at 445 Albee Square West at City Point has officially reopened following a pretty big upgrade and expansion project that has brought along with it new recliner seats (yay!), five new auditoriums, additional restrooms and upgrades to the theater's projection capabilities.
The cinema, which first debuted back in 2016, also includes the Video Vortex rental store and features standalone bar and lounge House of Wax, where guests can grab a local beer or a well-make cocktail. Unsurprisingly given its name, the space also features a “macabre collection of vintage ax figures for guests to browse while they enjoy one of the bar's signature cocktails,” reads an official press release.
Also on site are a dining area and an event space where New Yorkers can regularly attend trivia nights and comedy shows. Hosting a birthday there sounds particularly fun given all of the offerings on site and the recent revamping of the theater as a whole.
Speaking of: the five new auditoriums are now also available for rent for private functions.
“I’m thrilled to say that Downtown Brooklyn is now the state-of-the-art theater that our inspiring and passionate NYC community deserves,” said Michael Kustermann, Alamo Drafthouse CEO, in an official statement. “This theater means a great deal to our company, and I know it means a lot to our guests. These upgrades allow us to do more of what we love, which is playing awesome movies for the coolest fans in the world.”
Despite first debuting in Austin as a single-screen theater back in 1997, Alamo Drafthouse has quickly become part and parcel of New York's cultural ethos.
The first-ever iteration of the cinema took over Yonkers in 2013 and still stands there strong. In 2016, the Downtown Brooklyn location debuted to much fanfare, followed by the 2021 opening of the first theater in Manhattan, by the Financial District. In 2022, the company landed in Staten Island, where it still operates a nine-screen house.
Although joining a then-crowded field of cinemas across New York, Alamo Drafthouse has consistently stood out for its famous dinner-and-drinks-during-the-movie offerings (when it first opened, that wasn't really a thing!) alongside a strict cinema-going etiquette culture on site. You basically get the best of both worlds in there.