WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL: The 14-screen theater closed earlier this year and is now being eyed for redevelopment.
An affiliate of commercial real estate veteran John Campanella has acquired the former Regal Bowie Stadium 14 Cinema in Prince George’s County, a little more than two years after the theater chain’s parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and moved to shutter Regal theaters across the U.S.
Regal Bowie LLC closed last month on its $4 million acquisition of the property, located at 15200 Major Lansdale Blvd. Campanella confirmed the acquisition in an interview but declined to comment further on the transaction or the LLC’s plans going forward. Campanella is also a principal with D.C.-based advisory firm FP Capital Partners, though he said the acquisition was made apart from FP Capital.
Campanella has served for nearly five years as principal at FP Capital. He came to the post after more than 15 years in the real estate financing industry for Cushman & Wakefield and the companies that fed into it, Cassidy Turley and Cassidy & Pinkard Colliers among them. He helped line up $243 million in financing for Portals II in southwest D.C., secured a $140 million loan for Normandy Real Estate Partners for a portfolio of properties, and $40 million in commercial mortgage-backed securities for a mixed-use complex in downtown Bethesda, among other deals.
The sale comes not quite a year after a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Texas approved an order allowing Regal’s owner, Cineworld, to terminate more than three dozen leases, including the one it held with an affiliate of Dallas-based Spirit Realty Capital Inc., which owned the former Bowie theater property. The site last sold for $15 million near the end of 2016, per the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation. It is currently assessed at just shy of $9.1 million.
The Bowie cinema shut down earlier this year. The now-vacant theater is located in the larger Bowie Crossing retail center, southeast of John Hanson Highway and Collington Road. The property is zoned CGO, a commercial, general and office designation that permits a range of different uses including mixed-use development.
The shuttered Bowie theater reflected a range of outcomes for Regal’s network of cinemas impacted by its bankruptcy filing. Another, the Regal Gallery Place, was similarly threatened with closure but was saved through Cinemark’s restructuring, as was its Ballston location.
