By Liz Goff

The silver screen could be making a comeback to Sunnyside.

Developer Curbcut Urban Partners is in talks with a movie theater chain to lease 38,000-sauare-feet of space in its planned, eight-story medical and office building on Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside, company officials said.

Curbcut president and CEO Aaron Malinsky said in an interview with the Commercial Observer that the development firm is negotiating with an undisclosed movie theater chain to lease the first and second floors of the 146,000-square-foot development at 38-01 Queens Boulevard. “There’s an incredible need for a movie theater,” Malinsky said in the interview. “There’s a movie theater in Astoria, and after that it’s silent.”

The neighborhood’s last existing theater, The Sunnyside Center Cinema, located five blocks from the Curbcut development, was forced to shut its doors in January 2014 amid competition from large multiplex theaters.

Local residents said they are excited to hear that a movie theater might soon be opening in the neighborhood. “The Kaufman Multiplex isn’t that far away,” June Lawlor, 28, said. “But it would be nice to be able to walk to a local theater to take in a shoe, instead of driving and having to fight for parking.”

Malinsky said if talks for the theater are successful, Curbcut would likely lease or rent the remaining 2,000-square-feet of ground floor space available at the new development to a small retailer.

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