How the Bedford Street Avon Theatre Changed Stamford

"We have 3,000 members and each year it brings an incremental $400,000 to the businesses and restaurants in downtown from movie-goers, and many of them come from surrounding towns."

That's Susan Cullman, co-chair of the Avon Theatre's board, describing the cinema's pull on Bedford Street at the July groundbreaking for its renovation. It's a specific number from someone who has spent years watching how a single-screen cinema feeds foot traffic to the block. The theater closed its doors in January, the formal construction groundbreaking happened July 22, and the reopening isn't scheduled until late October 2027. That's close to two years without the anchor Cullman says is worth $400,000 a year to its neighbors.

So what's actually happening on Bedford Street while that number sits untested? Not a vacant block. Not a quiet one either. It's a corridor that split in two directions the moment the projector went dark, and neither direction runs through the theater's old front door.

Where the movies went

The Avon didn't just close, it exported itself. Its "Avon on Tour" series is currently running screenings, filmmaker talks, and educational programs at six partner sites: Ferguson Library, Mill River Park, and the Stamford Town Center within city limits, plus the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Darien Library in Darien, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Connecticut in Westport. That's three towns beyond Stamford's own border to catch a film that used to be a five-minute walk from Columbus Park.

None of the six sit on Bedford Street. None replace the specific experience of ducking into a screening between dinner reservations. What they replace is the programming, not the place. The Avon is treating its own audience as portable while the physical building gets rebuilt from the inside out: a new 39-seat third screening room dedicated to education and emerging filmmakers, a new café and wine bar, Dolby Atmos sound, 4K laser projection, and full ADA compliance in a building that opened in 1939. The $19 million project had surpassed $15 million in donor funding as of the July groundbreaking, and the city put $500,000 toward it directly. Construction is targeting substantial completion by September 2027, with doors open to the public in late October.

That's a long runway for a single-screen habit to find somewhere else to live. Three of the six stand-in venues did it by leaving the city.

What stayed exactly where it was

A few doors down from the theater's darkened marquee, the block didn't skip a beat. BarVera opened at 148 Bedford Street back in February 2025, in the space that used to house Roasted Sandwich Company, next door to Hudson Social. It arrived a full year before the Avon's lights went out, and it built its following on something that had nothing to do with moviegoers walking past: chef Charbel Hayek won Bravo's "Top Chef Middle East and North Africa," and owners Myrna and Pierre Lahood, who also run Greenwich Flavors, gave Bedford Street a 50-seat dining room (plus 30 more on the patio once the weather turns) built around man'oushe, muhammara, and a wine list that has kept the restaurant in local food coverage well into this year.

BarVera never needed the theater crowd to justify its lease. It planted its own flag on the strength of a chef's résumé and a menu, and it's still there, doing dinner service seven nights a week, through the exact stretch of time the Avon has been a construction site.

The rest of downtown made the same case on a bigger scale. Stamford Downtown's Summer Restaurant Weeks wrapped up on Labor Day, September 7, after two weeks that pulled 29 downtown restaurants into prix fixe lunch and dinner specials, lunch running $15 to $20 and dinner $30 to $55. A few blocks over in Columbus Park, the interactive light installation "Mi Casa, Your Casa 2.0," featuring illuminated house-shaped swings from designers Esrawe + Cadena, closed on the same day. Two separate draws, both timed to end together, both running the entire late summer without any input from a cinema that wasn't operating.

None of this required the Avon to be open. The neighborhood found its own reasons to be out on a Tuesday night that had nothing to do with a movie ticket.

The part that doesn't come back the same way

Here's the piece worth sitting with before the Avon's 2027 reopening arrives. When the theater comes back, it isn't reopening as the same building. It's adding a café and wine bar of its own, meaning the Avon will, for the first time, compete directly with the block it used to simply feed. The old relationship, cinema drives diners to nearby restaurants, is being redrawn into something closer to a rival: a landmark that can now seat and serve its own crowd before or after a film, without anyone needing to walk to BarVera or Hudson Social first.

That's not a loss for Bedford Street. It's a second anchor where there used to be one, arriving into a block that spent nearly two years proving it doesn't actually depend on a single building to stay busy. The $400,000 figure Cullman cited was real when the theater was the only game on the block. It will be tested against a very different Bedford Street when the lights come back on, one that already has its own restaurant identity, its own restaurant weeks, and its own reasons to fill a Friday night that have nothing to do with what's playing at 272 Bedford Street.

If you're the kind of person who tracks these things because you live two blocks from Columbus Park and want to know when the Avon's marquee lights up again, mark late October 2027. Everything else on the block, it turns out, was never waiting on that date to begin with.

Curious what a specific Mid City or downtown Stamford address is actually worth in a market that keeps reinventing its own foot traffic? Randy Musiker has spent 25+ years reading these blocks street by street. Let's talk about your next move.