Cinemex at Gulfstream Park up for approval in Hallandale

The Stronach Group, which owns the Gulfstream Park racing facility, will go before the Hallandale Beach Planning and Zoning Board next Wednesday as it seeks to build a 48,467-square-foot Cinemex theater on the mixed-use property.

The 996-seat luxury movie theater would have 11 screens and would serve food and drinks to moviegoers at their seats. The theater would be the Mexican company’s second in South Florida and the United States, after Brickell City Centre, which is opening this month.

Gulfstream Park is a 250-acre site near the corner of Hallandale Beach Boulevard and South Federal Highway. A redevelopment plan for the park, approved roughly 10 years ago, allowed park owners to add a large mixed-use component to complement its thoroughbred horse racing and casino facilities. Since then, retail, commercial, residential and recreational space has been added to the park, including such upscale retailers such as Blu Ice, a designer women’s apparel shop, and Williams-Sonoma, in addition to fine dining restaurants like Christine Lee’s and III Forks.   

The partially-implemented redevelopment plan for Gulfstream allows for up to 2,500 theater seats. The Cinemax theater is slated to have upscale features, including auditorium “comfort seating” and an upscale food concession, that will have a bar and a small area in the lobby where waiting customers will be able to dine. Two of the movie auditoriums will be on the second level of the building. Parking for movie-goers will be in existing spaces at the complex.

Although theater seats have been included in the redevelopment plan, residents have voiced concerns about traffic congestion in the vicinity of the park. Recently, the city has considered buying land from Gulfstream to create another road within the park to alleviate the traffic problems on Federal Highway and Hallandale Beach Boulevard. But Keven Klopp, Hallandale Beach’s director of development services, told The Real Deal that these traffic issues are not relevant to the Cinemax plan. “There won’t be any requirement that [Gulfstream’s owner] give up land for a road” as a condition of building the new theater, he said.  

The city is still considering buying land at Gulfstream for a new road in the future, and the purchase will not be done by eminent domain, even though this method of acquisition has been considered in the past, Klopp said.