Sheldon S. Shafer

Louisville Courier Journal

Village 8 Theatres is due to close at the end of the year as KentuckyOne Health takes title this fall to the Village Center mall property on Dutchmans Lane in St. Matthews.

Parties have agreed to let the cinemas operate through its busy holiday season, but the theater must close by no later than January 2017, said Sandy Metts, head of Metts Co., the property entity that owns the 6.5-acre Village Center.

The company has a contract to sell the strip center to KentuckyOne Health.

KentuckyOne Health spokeswoman Barbara Mackovic declined to comment beyond a corporate statement that said the company is "still finalizing future plans for the Dupont mall property. We are not involved in current discussions regarding lease terms with tenants. Metts Co. is the contact for lease terms."

Officials of Apex Entertainment, which owns Village 8 and also the Baxter Avenue Theatres, didn't return phone calls. Les Aberson Jr., Apex's CEO, couldn't be reached for comment. The Village 8 cinema complex opened in 1975 and was acquired by Apex in 1996.

It was disclosed in October 2013 that KentuckyOne had signed a contract to buy the Village strip mall from the Metts organization.

KentuckyOne has additional nearby land holdings and has not indicated what it intends to do with the property, concentrated in the heart of an area of St. Matthews that is a Mecca for medical-related development.

KentuckyOne’s purchase, however, would keep the Metts property out of the hands of two major competitors, the Norton and Baptist organizations.

Norton Women's and Kosair Children's Hospital and Baptist Health Louisville hospital are located near the Village mall, as is Jewish Hospital Medical Center East, mainly an outpatient facility just east of Breckenridge Lane off the Watterson Expressway.

In addition, the Norton Healthcare organization recently announced plans to develop a large medical office building along Breckenridge and just north of Dutchmans Lane, on the site of another long-standing strip mall that will be demolished. That shopping center's tenants include Visionworks, Office Depot, Amish Hills, Moe's restaurant and Pep Boys with a detached Marathon service station and food mart.

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There also are numerous smaller medical office buildings saturating the area near Dutchmans and Breckenridge lanes.

The mall under contract to KentuckyOne, along with Village 8, has about a dozen other tenants. They include a pharmacy, a tennis center and smaller occupants.

Metts said in an interview Tuesday that nearly all the tenants are expected to vacate the premises by the scheduled October closing. Several have already moved, including a beauty shop. Others are in the process of relocating, including the Louisville Bridge Center, which is moving to a site in Plainview.

Metts said one or two of the remaining tenants have leases that run past October and that their status is to be negotiated between the lease holders and KentuckyOne.

Metts said she doesn't know what KentuckyOne intends to do with the property, or whether Apex intends to try to open another cinemas complex elsewhere.

The land under contract to KentuckyOne includes extensive parking on both sides of the main L-shaped commercial restaurant, office and business complex.

Reporter Sheldon S. Shafer can be reached at (502) 582-7089, or via email at sshafer@courier-journal.com.

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