The Monroe Theatre: Rochester's Sleeping Giant on Monroe Avenue
The Short Version
- The Monroe Theatre at 585 Monroe Avenue has been vacant since 2008 — its auditorium demolished, its future undefined, its preserved facade the only thing that survived community pressure.
- A Walgreens absolute triple-net storage lease is the primary structural barrier to any community use of the building, with no publicly known expiration date.
- Over 1,000 people responded to the MARC neighborhood survey about Monroe Avenue's future, and 60 percent of them don't live on Monroe Avenue — the theater's symbolic pull extends across the whole city.
- Federal and New York State historic rehabilitation tax credits stack to cover up to 40 percent of qualified rehab costs — a financial tool that has not yet been unlocked for this property.
- Comedy Renovation Education and Empowerment Project is the only named entity with nonprofit standing, a track record of two summers of programming, and a specific vision for the space — they need a building.
Stand in front of 585 Monroe Avenue in Rochester and look up. The facade is still there — preserved brick and terra cotta, the ghost of a marquee frame — and almost nothing else. The entrance is sealed. The auditorium behind it was demolished in September 2008. What remains is a foyer, a Walgreens storage arrangement, and 17 years of unanswered questions about what this building is supposed to become.
The Monroe Theatre opened in 1927 with 1,180 seats. For more than four decades it was where this neighborhood saw first-run Hollywood pictures — not downtown, but right here on Monroe Avenue. Gone with the Wind. Oklahoma! The Sound of Music. Then the model changed, the neighborhood disinvested, and the Monroe became something else entirely. What it hasn't become, in all that time, is anyone's priority to restore. That's the thing Rochester is increasingly unwilling to accept.
A Neighborhood's First-Run Palace (1927–1970)
A Neighborhood's First-Run Palace (1927–1970)
The Monroe Theatre at 585 Monroe Avenue opened in 1927 with 1,180 seats — a substantial venue for a residential corridor at a time when neighborhood theaters were how most people experienced film. By 1941, the Schine Circuit had taken over operations, folding the Monroe into a regional network that brought studio pictures to audiences who didn't need to travel downtown.
For more than three decades this was the theater where people in the South Wedge and Upper Monroe neighborhood came for first-run films. A patron quoted in Cinema Treasures remembered seeing Oklahoma! here in 1953: "First wide screen movie I ever saw. It was thrilling." That is not nostalgia for its own sake. That is the record of a building that gave people something they carried for the rest of their lives.
Here is how the Monroe's history breaks across its three eras:
The Cinerama era came and went. By 1970 the Monroe showed its last regular picture. Forty-three years as a neighborhood anchor — and then the long slide began.
The Long Slide: From Adult Theater to Vacant Shell
What followed doesn't need to be softened. From 1970 through 1995, the Monroe operated as an adult film theater. Then it ran as a Show World adult retail store. Each transition made it harder for the building to become what the neighborhood needed, and easier for the blocks around it to absorb the signal that this address wasn't coming back.
Then came September 2008. The owner demolished the auditorium — the interior that held 1,180 seats, that stage, those decades of shared experience. Community pressure, organized and persistent, prevented total erasure. The city preserved the facade and the lobby at the community's request, recognizing the building's historic significance.
It was a partial victory. The bones of what made the Monroe the Monroe — its interior, its acoustic space, its stage — were gone. What remained was the face it showed to Monroe Avenue, and a foyer behind it.
That is what has been sitting here for 17 years.
Kevin Hunt, owner of Enright's Thirst Parlor directly across the street, put it plainly: "When a place isn't being used, it isn't being managed. That affects everyone around it."
The Ownership Puzzle: Rainaldi, Walgreens, and ESL
The Ownership Puzzle: Rainaldi, Walgreens, and ESL
Understanding why the Monroe stays vacant requires a short walk through the ownership structure.
The building is owned by Monroe Goodman Associates LLC, connected to the Rainaldi Brothers. ROC City Magazine reports that Walgreens holds what is described as an absolute triple-net lease — meaning Walgreens covers taxes, insurance, and maintenance in exchange for using the space for storage. The arrangement keeps the building legally occupied while preventing any community use. From Walgreens' side, it's a logistics convenience. From the neighborhood's side, it's a structural barrier with no known expiration date in the public record.
Owner Fred Rainaldi's only known public statement, shared with WHEC, was that he's "exploring the idea of retail space." No timeline. No named developer. Just that phrase, offered once, and not updated publicly since.
Rome Celli, president of the Upper Monroe Neighborhood Association, offered a different view: "Walgreens has not fulfilled its obligation to the community."
The Comedy Renovation Education and Empowerment Project — a 501(c)(3) that has run comedy programming at other Rochester venues for two summers — has circulated a petition that targets ESL Federal Credit Union as a potential transfer pathway, separate from a direct sale. Whether that pathway is legally viable depends on details that aren't public. But directing pressure toward ESL signals something important: the community has stopped waiting for the owner to move on his own.
The scale of engagement makes the ownership puzzle feel more urgent. According to ROC City, the MARC neighborhood survey drew over 1,000 respondents — and 60 percent of them don't live on Monroe Avenue.
This is not a local complaint. It is a city-wide signal that the Monroe carries symbolic weight well beyond its block.
Monroe Avenue's Broader Revival: What the Community Is Asking For
Monroe Avenue's Broader Revival: What the Community Is Asking For
Monroe Avenue is not struggling. That's part of what makes the vacancy so conspicuous. The corridor already supports 13 local bars and 5 award-winning restaurants, plus a range of independent shops that have made this one of Rochester's most consistent commercial strips. The Monroe Theatre's vacancy is a hole in an active corridor, not a symptom of a dying neighborhood.
The MARC coalition's survey identified the community's priorities as safety, beautification, and support for small businesses — and threading through all of it, the theater as a symbolic keystone. Not the only thing needed, but the thing that signals whether this block is being taken seriously.
There is one detail in recent coverage worth naming directly. ROC City reported on a fluorescent green paint job applied to the Monroe's facade — described as a possible effort to undermine landmark designation by making the building appear less historically intact. Whether that framing is accurate is difficult to verify from outside the situation. But the fact that landmark designation is apparently worth preventing tells you something about the stakes as the owner sees them.
Landmark designation, if pursued and granted, would restrict what an owner could do with the facade. It would also open access to historic preservation incentives that could make redevelopment financially viable in ways it currently isn't.
What does it mean when a neighborhood that already has a thriving commercial corridor keeps organizing around a single vacant building, year after year? That persistence is itself a kind of gift — to the building, to the block, and to whatever community eventually inherits this space.
What Comes Next: Realistic Paths for the Monroe Theatre
What Comes Next: Realistic Paths for the Monroe Theatre
The Monroe Theatre is not a blank canvas. The auditorium is gone. Any viable future works within what exists: the preserved facade, the foyer, and whatever can be built or configured behind those walls. That is a real constraint. It is also a starting point — and starting points are what this community has been asking for.
The Comedy Renovation Education and Empowerment Project has the most specific public vision on the table: a Monroe Comedy Theater built around youth programming, mental health community events, open mic nights, and live performance. They have nonprofit standing, two summers of programming experience at other venues, and a named concept. What they don't have is a building.
the Landmark Society's "Five to Revive" list — Rochester's published roster of at-risk historic buildings deserving organized preservation attention — has not yet included the Monroe. Getting on that list would not resolve the ownership question. But it would bring institutional preservation advocacy into the conversation in a way that doesn't currently exist at scale.
The financial case for rehabilitation is real and largely untouched. Historic rehabilitation projects in New York State can draw on two stacking incentive programs:
The federal Historic Tax Credit provides 20 percent of qualified rehabilitation expenditures for certified historic structures used for income-producing purposes. New York State's historic preservation credit stacks an additional 20 percent for eligible properties. Combined, a well-structured rehabilitation project could recoup up to 40 percent of costs through tax incentives before any grants, city participation, or community development financing is counted.
That math has unlocked harder projects than this one. The question is whether it requires the owner to recognize an opportunity — or enough organized community pressure to make inaction more costly than action.
"The vacant theater tears a hole in a vibrant commercial district."
— Comedy Renovation Education and Empowerment Project petition
The petition, the survey respondents, the neighborhood associations, the business owners across the street — all of it is a constituency that this building has held together for 17 years. That is not nothing. That is a community that has decided, without anyone formally deciding, that the Monroe Theatre still belongs to them.
What would it take — the right combination of pressure, incentive, and will — to finally bring it back? And what are each of us, as people who live and work on this corridor, willing to do to help make that happen?
