East End, K Property file plans to demolish Sunshine Cinema

The sun is setting on Sunshine Cinema.

The building’s new owners East End Capital and K Property Group, which purchased it for $31.5 million in May, filed plans Thursday to demolish the structure, according to the Lo-Down.

The developers plan to replace the 30,000-square-foot theater with a mixed-use building featuring retail on the lower floors and offices above. Landmark Theatres co-owner Mark Cuban initially planned to buy the building with his partner Todd Wagner and build a dine-in movie theater, but their plan fell through in 2012 after the local community board rejected their liquor license application.

Parts of the Sunshine Cinema building reportedly date back as far as 1838, when it was the base for a German evangelical mission. It became the Houston Hippodrome in 1909, a venue for Yiddish vaudeville acts, and was renamed the Sunshine in 1917. It closed in 1945 and was used for storage before reopening in the late 1990s as the Landmark Sunshine Cinema.

A Landmark theater opened in September at the base of the Durst Organization’s Midtown West tower Via 57 West. [The Lo-Down] – Eddie Small