Hong Kong Island's only art-house cinema will shut its doors at the end of next month after failing to extend the lease with the landlord Sun Hung Kai Properties.
Cine-Art House, which has been offering alternatives to mainstream blockbusters for 18 years, will close until a new location is found. Its current site, on the ground floor of the Sun Hung Kai Centre in Wan Chai, will probably be turned into a restaurant.
Chui Hin-wai, director and theatre management department manager of Sil-Metropole Organisation, which runs Cine-Art House, said it was sad news, but he vowed to keep searching for a new venue.
'We will miss it very much but there is nothing we can do. We tried very hard to negotiate for an extension of the lease,' Mr Chui said.
'But everything has an ending ... throughout these 18 years we have been on very good terms with [landlord] Sun Hung Kai Properties. They charged us at a below-market rate. Ending the lease had nothing to do with the increase in rent. They said that they would help us look for new locations.'
Sun Hung Kai said it was painful but necessary to end the lease to revamp the mall. It also had to restructure the mix of tenants on a regular basis to attract patrons.
The property giant said that negotiations with potential new tenants were continuing.
