Movie theater prepares for shutdown by Park Nicollet
Park Mann Cinema 6 along with surrounding businesses to be replaced
The Mann Cinema 6 located on Excelsior had their final showing on May 20. The building and surrounding buildings are going to be taken over by Park Nicollet.
June 1, 2018
When senior Tommy Guddal heard about the Mann’s St. Louis Park Cinema 6 closing, he felt distraught because of the memories he valued at the theater.
“I am really sad. I used to go there a lot with friends and go see a movie. It was a convenient location for a lot of kids in Park,” Guddal said. “There is something about that theater that brings up a lot of nostalgia, especially when I was a kid.”Mann Cinema 6 off Excelsior Boulevard and in the backyard of Park Nicollet Clinic has given up its space to their aforementioned neighbors May 20, according to Communications Supervisor for Methodist Hospital Patrick Strait. Michelle Mann, district manager for Mann Theaters was unavailable for comment.
Strait said the local theater will become a new clinic for Park Nicollet allowing them to reach more people in the community.
“The clinic will be a Park Nicollet specialty center that will specialize in neurology and plastic surgery and essentially what it’s going to do, looking at St. Louis Park as a whole, it’s going to help us to shuffle the deck a little bit and help us move some of our services around to better serve patients,” Strait said.
Businesses around the Mann Theater such as Bruegger’s Bagels and Chipotle will also come to a close, according to Strait. However, Chipotle Public Relations and Communications Manager Quinn Kelsey commented in an email that local students and residents don’t have to worry about the restaurant being closed because of its nearby relocation.
“We love serving the St. Louis Park area. Actually, we are simply relocating our existing Chipotle to a location within the same parking lot, about 50 yards from our current site in a former Granite City building,” Kelsey said. “No one in the area will have to be without their Chipotle fix.”
Junior cinema employee Leo Zeigle said he is sad to see the theater go because of the employee benefits and convenient location it had to him and other Park students. Ziegel said there are other locations he is willing to visit.
“Yeah it’s going to be a bummer, I mean it was really close, and it was a very reliable place to go. I enjoy working there because there are tons of benefits,” Ziegel said. “There are other theaters close by. The Hopkins theater is really cheap, so that’s a good alternative. It’s going to be a bummer either way.”
Freshman Isaac Scott said he enjoyed many of the features of the theater and fostered many moments there.
“I’m going to miss having a close movie theatre, it’s really sad that it’s going. I liked the popcorn, the candy, I loved the escalator,” Scott said. “I think overall I am just going to miss the memory of being able to go there.”
Strait said Park Nicollet didn’t actively seek to move into the theater. According to Strait, Frauenshuh Commercial Real Estate, who owns the building, offered the space to Park Nicollet.
“If the space wouldn’t have become available we wouldn’t have gone knocking on the door saying, ‘hey, we really need the space, we really need to grow, we need to expand, we need to do all these things,’” Strait said. “But the opportunity was there and from a bigger standpoint we could always find new ways to serve more patients, to increase our capabilities, to do anything we can to really accomodate more people in the community and that’s exactly what we want to do.”
According to Strait, the goal is to start renovating the first floor of the theater by June and hopefully have the specialty clinic open in January of 2019.