McKinley Mall Theatres suing landlord

HAMBURG, N.Y. (WIVB) — If you’ve been to McKinley Mall Theatres in recent years, you may have experienced some discomfort.

People have taken to apps like Yelp, saying in the summer the theater feels like a tropical jungle, while in the winter it’s an arctic tundra. The owners of the theater said it’s because the landlord is breaking its contract by not fixing its heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.

WIVB News 4 spoke with Zach Zurich, the main liaison between McKinley Mall Cinemas and its landlord. He said at one point the lack of heat got so bad in the theater, it had to start giving moviegoers blankets.

“It’s difficult to give customers the experience that we’d like to have when the auditoriums are too hot or too cold,” said Zurich.

Zurich said the problem with broken HVACs began in September 2021, forcing the owners to take “drastic measures.”

“We tried to pass out blankets in the wintertime,” said Zurich. “We tried to get heat from the lobby into the theaters. So there are times where we had to close anywhere between one and three screens.”

Emails obtained by News 4 show countless times the theater reached out to the landlord, Kohan Realty Investment Group, run by Mike Kohan. By June 2022, the HVAC system still wasn’t fixed.

“We even offered to pay ourselves the cost of the equipment and offset that from rent,” said Zurich. “They told us that the equipment was already ordered, it was going to be installed.”

Equipment was installed, but according to the lawsuit the landlord used “defective, second-hand equipment that was at the end of its lifespan,” only temporarily fixing the issue.

“We told them around June of (2022) that we would stop paying rent if we didn’t fix it to try to put additional pressure on him to fix it,” said Zurich.

That tactic didn’t work, leading to an eviction notice from Kohan.

“Closing means we have to fire people that work for us,” said Zurich. “Closing means people in the local community can’t come and go to the movies at our facility.”

McKinley Mall Cinemas filed a counterclaim, saying the only reason it has been threatened with eviction is due to the negligent landlord.

We did speak on the phone with the landlord Mike Kohan. He provided us with no comment on the issue and did not have us speak with his attorneys. We spoke with the theater’s attorney, James Graber at Rupp Pfalzgraf, who said the theater wants no less than $4 million in damages.

“My client believes the business is now worth nothing. And it was a very profitable business when they entered into this lease agreement,” said Graber.

Graber said the theater demanded a jury trial, which is rare in these types of cases, adding that the theater wants neighbors to see what’s going on in McKinley Mall.

“Then we’re going to engage in a process called discovery, where we think this is a pattern extending far beyond my client, and we want discovery on that,” Graber said. “We want to know about some other tenant issues that they’ve had. We want to get some documents, that information there, so that we can build our case.”

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Dillon Morello is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has been part of the News 4 team since September of 2023. See more of his work here and follow him on Twitter.

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