ORLANDO, Fla. – Premiere Cinema 14 will close on Friday, the theater announced last week on social media, ending an era inside Orlando’s Fashion Square Mall.
On its website, the theater said March 12 will be its last day of operation as “Orlando Fashion Square prepares to enter its next phase of future redevelopment.”
While no other details were given, Unicorp National Developments, the owners of the land the movie theater and the rest of the 625-foot square mall sit on, has a vision in mind.
“We’ve been developing property here in Orlando for 30 plus years and gosh, we do a couple million dollars of real estate development a year,” said Chuck Whittall, president of Unicorp National Developments.
Whittall tells News 6 that the company purchased the land with hopes of revitalizing the area.
“We bought the dirt underneath the mall,” he explained. “We don’t own the buildings. That’s owned by Bancorp, which they foreclosed on it from a previous developer several years ago.”
Whittall said ownership questions and what he described as a bank’s unrealistic valuation of the buildings have delayed Unicorp’s plans.
“The cost to upkeep it is substantially higher than the income they’re generating,” he said. “So, eventually I think they’re going to want to just hand the keys and let us do something different with the property.”
[WATCH: Orlando Fashion Square Mall is up for sale (from 2024)]
Whittall said potential ideas include outdoor dining and entertainment, more restaurants and shops, possibly outdoor golf, and even another theater.
“Our hope has been to redevelop the property. It’s a great piece of land. It’s ideally located between Orlando and Winter Park, and we think it’d be a great redevelopment to do a lifestyle center,” he said. “It would be a great addition to the area. There’s a lot of great neighborhoods that surround it, and I think they would enjoy the entertainment and the restaurants we could bring to the property.”
For more on Unicorp’s proposal for the area, click here.
News 6 reached out to Bancorp for comment, but so far the company has not responded.
Malls in Central Florida
Orlando Fashion Square is not the only mall that has struggled with the changing times, as once-popular staple stores have pulled out or gone out of business entirely.
Seminole Towne Center in Sanford closed in 2025 and is being redeveloped into a mixed-use complex with a Costco.
Malls like Oviedo Mall in Oviedo have kept going with the help of small businesses.
West Oaks Mall in Ocoee took on the Orange County Tax Collector as a tenant, along with other government offices in the past.