Cinergy CFO Clarifies Future Plans for Regal/UA Amarillo Star Building

Cinergy is one of Amarillo's favored places to spend time with family and friends. It's one of the hotspots for entertainment in the city.

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Cinergy announced in 2023 that they had purchased the Regal/UA Amarillo Star building and the Midland Regal Tall City and had plans to open second locations of Cinergy Entertainment to both cities. However, in the year since the announcement, no progress has been made on the Amarillo Star building.

We reached out to Cinergy to find out what was going on and they gave us a statement about the building.

Cinergy Entertainment Group, Inc. does own the property that was formerly the UA/Regal Star.  We continue to evaluate plans for best use of the real estate, which have changed over time.  With realization of the high cost of construction, Cinergy paused plans for a re-purposing of the building for use by Cinergy as an entertainment or cinema complex.  Our managers at the existing Cinergy location in Amarillo have been approached by a number of people who indicated that they would like to purchase the property, so they arranged for a sign at the property identifying broker information for Cinergy. - Cinergy Entertainment Spokesperson

Read More: Unexpected Turn: Cinergy to Sell Amarillo Regal Theater Building |

We initially took the statement as an indication that they were planning to sell the building. However, that is not the case.  Rich Schwarte, President & CFO at Cinergy reached out to clarify that Cinergy still has plans for the building, but they have been paused for the moment.

With respect to the Regal properties. We bought the Midland, Tall City. We're currently working on a development there. We're not quite finalized and finished with it. We're working with the general contractor and city personnel to make sure we have just the right set of entertainment. The Amarillo star location, is somewhat similar. It's an opportunity for us to own some real estate that we think is in a great position in the city. Exactly the same scenario for Midland.

Why haven't they made progress with the Amarillo Star Building?

What we realized is the cost of developing that into another kind of entertainment is substantially more expensive than we had anticipated. In fact, Jeff and Jamie Benson Cinergy owners are very creative people.  I have like three different floor plans of entertainment that they really liked to see. Each time that we kind of pencil it out it just substantially more expensive than it seems to make sense and more expensive than we previously anticipated.

Are you putting the building on the market?

Well, we don't have any specific plans or we don't have any specific proposals, other than we're continuing to evaluate it. We're continuing to evaluate the opportunities. We've had so many people reach out to us in the Amarillo community in the surrounding area asking about it. Folks that want to turn it into, you know this or that we put up a sign so that when people call that number they reach back to our Vice President of real estate here in the city, as opposed to talking to the managers at the Cinergy in Amarillo who aren't involved in and not aware of of the plans for Amarillo Star.

But Cinergy is interested in developing it. We've just gone down a number of paths and we realized the cost of construction is so substantial that we really need to carefully evaluate in the first place.

What's the state of the facility?

You know, it's a little bit older facility and I think in its day it did very very well, but it's not a state-of-the-art facility right now. It's going to take a substantial refurbishment, everything from movie projectors, to all the finishes inside of the building.  Bringing it up to the Cinergy standard, if you will.  And I think the challenge for us is to find that right mix of things that are warranted in the community that will do well in the community and figuring out a way to pay for those.

We can't wait to see what else Cinergy will bring to Amarillo.

Well, I hope I have some more good news or updates soon. I can't promise anything. We're continuing to evaluate how it is that we can bring some entertainment to Amarillo.  It's a difficult task figuring out exactly how to move forward and I do believe we will find something.  We'd love nothing more than to find another opportunity to bring something really cool to Amarillo.

The plan for another Cinergy is in the works, but with the costs of updating the facility, it'll be a future project.