A new incarnation of Broadway4D has signed a lease for around 25,000 square feet at the Liberty Theatre in the entertainment megaproject at 234 West 42nd Street.
The idea for Broadway4D has been bouncing around the Deuce since 2012. The original team was targeting the Times Square Theatre and even signed a 49-year lease before renovation costs went through the roof.
That prior version reflected a theme park sensibility including in-seat effects. The new version aims for a theater-wide immersive experience. Much interior work is needed so it will be at least a year before it opens at the property, which also features Dave & Busters and Appleby’s.
Gary Trock of CBRE represented Broadway4D while a Cushman & Wakefield team including Alan Schmerzler and Diana Boutross represented the building owners, Brookfield and Madison International Capital.
The Liberty’s first floor has 9,830 square feet and the second has 10,482. A spokesperson for the venture and the brokers declined comment.
The new immersive venture is designed to enchant and inspire Broadway audiences while using the latest technology to present a creative script that weaves in 20 of Broadway’s greatest songs and is performed by Great White Way stars.
“You will feel like you can touch the actors,” said a source who was not authorized to discuss the project.
The target audience includes fans challenged by high ticket prices and limited seat availability for Broadway shows.
Original investor Robert Kory, an entertainment lawyer and producer who is known for the career renaissance of Leonard Cohen, and the new lead investors from Toronto, Colonial House Capital, are on board with the new vision.
A decade ago, the producing duo of Donald Kushner and Elie Samaha resurrected Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre as a setting for IMAX films. In 2015, Samaha and Kushner — producer of the animated “Tron” — purchased all the Broadway4D filmed material and assets under the LLC 1991 Broadway Theatre Group.
Then they looked for the right venue.
The project that includes the Liberty Theatre was developed by Bruce Ratner’s Forest City Ratner in the 1990s. He built the Hilton New York Times Square and incorporated entertainment venues in its base along the south side of West 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues.
Both the Liberty and adjacent Empire Theatre were part of New York State’s Times Square urban redevelopment project, dubbed the New 42, when the entire site was leased to Ratner.
On March 1, 1998, with politicians cheering them on, Ratner famously moved the entire Empire Theatre 168 feet east along 42nd Street where it was integrated into the project’s AMC Theaters. But an IMAX-type lease never materialized.
The Liberty Theatre was built in 1904 for both vaudeville shows and musicals. It was turned into a movie theater in 1933.
A 1990 fire ruined much of the Liberty’s interior but a portion later became a diner. During the pandemic, two tenants, Modell’s and Ripley’s Believe it or Not, shuttered. Their spaces are still available. Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum is part of the same project.
The New 42 helped revitalize what was a seedy area by leasing sites for the development of office towers on the primary corners and bringing several long-abandoned Broadway theaters back to life, including the New Victory on the north side and the New Amsterdam further east on the south side, which was leased to and restored by Disney.