Westhampton Beach Movie Theater Reopens After Three-Year Renovation as Sunset Theater

In early 2022, Inge Debyser came across an article by Taylor K. Vecsey in Behind the Hedges about the Westhampton Beach movie theater — known then as Hampton Arts Cinema — going on the market for $1.1 million.

The more than 8,000-square-foot structure on Brook Road, across the traffic circle from the Westhampton Beach Police headquarters, had been shuttered since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But Debyser, a Westhampton Beach resident, was still disappointed when she read the article.

“My first reaction was, that’s such a shame, because someone is going to buy it up and it will become office buildings,” she said. “No one will ever make this into a movie theater again.”

In that moment, Debyser didn’t know she was wrong.

She also didn’t know she would be one of the people responsible for bringing it back to life.

Debyser and a group of other investors decided to take a leap of faith and purchased the theater in 2022 for $1.15 million, determined to breathe new life into the two-screen cinema and ensure the community would have a place to go to the movies once again.

After several years of renovations and upgrades to the nearly 100-year-old building — more extensive than the group had initially expected — the community icon, renamed the Sunset Theater, will have its grand opening on Friday, April 25, at 3 p.m., with showings of a new release, “The Legend of Ochi,” as well as showings of two popular films that could fall under the broad umbrella of “classics” — “E.T.” and “Bridesmaids.”

“We are super excited,” Debyser said at the end of last week. “It’s been a long time getting here. We had three years of renovation, and it was much more extensive than I thought it was going to be. There were so many structural problems. It just took a very long time.”

A ribbon-cutting at the cinema is set for 3 p.m. on Friday, before the 3:45 p.m. showing of “The Legend of Ochi.”

Westhampton Beach Village Mayor Ralph Urban and the Board of Trustees will be there, and community members in attendance will receive free popcorn. Representatives from the Westhampton Beach Historical Society will also be on hand to honor the founders of Sunset Theater with a special award recognizing their preservation of the historic building and their role in safeguarding a vital piece of the village’s architectural and cultural heritage.

The Sunset Theater’s two screens — one with 143 seats and the other with 141 — will primarily showcase first-run films alongside a rotating repertory of curated classics and contemporary gems during quieter release weeks. In addition to “The Legend of Ochi,” “E.T.” and “Bridesmaids,” opening weekend will feature “The Iron Giant,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “The Fifth Element,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Pulp Fiction.”

In a nod to its Art Deco past, the space has been restored with elegant, old-Hollywood aesthetics. A second-floor cocktail bar is a new feature as well and will include a small bites menu. The theater is now also compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Debyser and her friends Samantha Adam and Laurence Verbeke, along with a fourth friend who has remained anonymous as a silent investor, went in together to purchase the theater, with a desire to bring it back to a place of prominence in the community.

“This wasn’t an investment fund or real estate billionaires,” Debyser said of the group. “We’re really local people. We did this for the community, but we really hope the community will help bring it back and keep it going for many more years to come.”

Debyser, Adam and Verbeke are all originally from Belgium. Among them, they have 11 children, and Debyser said that ensuring people in the community would have something to do together “as a family, on a rainy day,” was one of the big reasons why they decided to purchase the theater and begin the hard work of bringing it back to life.

They hired Paul Schuyler as general manager and Michael Balick to run the upstairs bar, dubbed the Sunset Social Club.

Schuyler, a Westhampton Beach High School graduate, ran the Orpheum Theater on Cape Cod for many years, while Balick has years of experience, previously working at Tutto il Giorno, and “knows how to make a darn good martini,” Debyser added.

For Debyser, reading the article in early 2022 was motivational because she wanted to see the theater survive for the good of the community.

“I’m a builder by trade, and I have a big love for old buildings and preservation,” she said. “And I have a sense of nostalgia for theaters.”

There’s plenty of history wrapped up in the Sunset Theater. It first opened in 1927, as the Hampton Star Theater. Less than 10 years later, in 1933, it was decimated by a fire. It opened again in 1947, as a summer theater, this time named the Westhampton Summer Playhouse.

In 1989, it was taken over by Cineplex Odeon, and several other people owned and operated the theater until it closed during the pandemic and was put up for sale after closing down in 2020.

For more information on the Sunset Theater, including showtimes, go to sunset-theater.com.