In another blow to a once-thriving retail and entertainment strip, the last of three Palace cinemas in Oxford Street, Paddington, will close after the long weekend.
The arthouse chain, whose lease in the historic Paddington Town Hall expires in March, is shutting the struggling and increasingly rundown Chauvel on Monday night.
The highest-grossing film in a cinema that has been an arthouse institution for more than four decades, Parasite, will be the final screening.
Palace Cinemas once also ran the Academy Twin (closed because of a rental dispute in 2010) and the Verona (closed when the building was sold for redevelopment in 2024). It moved its arthouse and festival programming in the eastern suburbs from the Verona to a former Hoyts cinema that became Palace Moore Park.
Palace chief executive Benjamin Zeccola said the Chauvel had been struggling to break even since reopening after COVID. He had planned to close it in late 2024, but a City of Sydney council rent reduction extended its life temporarily.
“It’s disappointing,” he said of the closure. “But my disappointment is reduced a little by a sense of relief [we’re] no longer responsible for maintaining something that’s not really working.”
Zeccola said patrons had shown less tolerance for the poor condition of the cinema in recent years.
“Customers were saying, ‘Look, unless the amenity is improved, there are more comfortable cinemas that we’re going to’,” he said.
While the council has long planned to restore the Town Hall, Zeccola said it had not happened in time for the Chauvel to continue operating.
“We had some fantastic openings for the French and the Italian film festivals there,” he said. “There was a real sense of atmosphere and history. You could feel in the bones of the building an incredible history of cinema in Sydney.”
When the Chauvel’s closure seemed imminent more than two years ago, Lord Mayor Clover Moore called it “a much-loved institution on the famous strip” and said the City of Sydney was committed to revitalising Oxford Street, including “significant building refurbishment”.
Palace head of marketing Alex Moir worked the cinema’s box office when he started as a casual with the chain in 2014.
“Back then, it was the go-to place for events,” he said. “Hosting screenings for fundraisers, filmmakers showing their films to friends and showcases for film schools.
“We hosted various festivals, public forums and filmmaker discussions. It was an important arthouse centrepiece for Sydney.”
It became apparent how much work the building needed when the Chauvel’s roof partly collapsed as a storm hit during a screening of the Russian crime drama Leviathan in 2015. Former foreign minister Bob Carr was part of a Q&A panel moderated by this writer at the event.
“Rain started pouring in during the screening,” Moir said. “I’m not sure if many people noticed because the film was so cold and wet.”
Before Palace took over in 2006, the Chauvel ran a popular cinematheque program of classic and contemporary films.
But all is not lost for cinema-goers on Oxford Street.
After the Town Hall is refurbished, it is expected the council will call for tenders to operate the cinema again. Zeccola said Palace would be keen to come back and at least one other cinema operator is believed to be interested.
There is also a plan for the Golden Age Cinema and Bar in Surry Hills to expand with new cinemas in the redevelopment of the Verona site.
Chief executive Barrie Barton said designs were still being worked out, but there would be two cinemas and two multipurpose auditoriums that could suit films, live music, small stage performances and presentations.
Once the redevelopment was approved, he hoped these cinemas and an adjoining restaurant-bar area would open in two to three years.
“I feel like the Golden Age thrives because of our own food and beverage but also the great restaurants that are around us,” Barton said. “We’re trying to work towards a similar layering of different experiences that collectively make it worth getting off your couch and shutting your Netflix down for an evening.”
In Sydney’s ever-changing cinema landscape, the Art Gallery of NSW has also flagged introducing its own cinematheque next month.
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