Roxy Cinema
Grill 10

I. The Summer of ’91

It originally opened on June 28, 1991 as the Cobb Roxy 10 Cinemas, and for a long time it was one of the most recognizable theaters in the area. Sitting at 1553 Palm Bay Road NE in the Crossroads Plaza shopping center, the Roxy was the go-to movie house for a huge swath of South Brevard — from Palm Bay families catching Saturday matinees to teenagers piling in for opening-night blockbusters.

The marquee in 1991 — T2, Boyz N the Hood, Robin Hood, City Slickers, Hot Shots!, 101 Dalmatians

That summer marquee tells you everything about the era. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Boyz N the Hood. The Naked Gun 2½. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. City Slickers. Hot Shots!. 101 Dalmatians. If you grew up in Palm Bay and saw any of those movies for the first time, there is a decent chance it was at the Roxy.

II. A Theater That Kept Changing Hands

What makes the Roxy interesting is that it went through a lot of changes over the years. It opened under Cobb Theatres, a well-known regional chain, and ran as the Cobb Roxy 10 for its first six years. In 1997, the property was sold to Regal Cinemas, part of the wave of consolidation that was reshaping the movie theater industry nationwide. But the Regal era did not last either — in 2002, Cobb took the theater back.

After that, it had a run as a $1 theater, which a lot of locals definitely remember. The dollar movies era packed the house — families, kids on summer break, teenagers who could scrape together enough for a ticket and a soda. It was not the newest screens or the loudest sound, but it was yours and it was a dollar.

The Roxy Cinema Grill 10 in its prime — marquee lit up at Crossroads Plaza

There were also plans tied to James Duffy in 2007 to bring it back, but that effort never really got off the ground the way people hoped. Then on July 1, 2009, it was taken over by Phoenix Theatres, and that is when it became the Roxy Cinema Grill 10 that a lot of people remember from its final years — a dine-in cinema where you could order food and drinks right from your seat while watching a movie.

III. The Digital Divide

The place finally closed on September 5, 2013, and from everything publicly documented, the big issue was the cost of converting from 35mm film projection to digital. That change crushed a lot of older theaters, especially smaller operators who could not justify the expense. The conversion could cost $70,000 to $100,000 per screen — and for a 10-screen theater already operating on thin margins, the math simply did not work. In the Roxy’s case, that appears to have been the final blow.

It is one of those cases where the theater did not just die because people stopped caring. It got caught in the middle of a major industry shift and could not survive it. Hollywood studios were phasing out 35mm prints entirely, meaning theaters that could not go digital would literally have nothing to show. The Roxy was far from alone — hundreds of independent and small-chain theaters across the country went dark for the exact same reason.

IV. What Came After

The Roxy Cinema Grill 10 — empty and overgrown in Crossroads Plaza

What makes it hit even harder is that just down the road, newer competition came in not long after. Once the newer theater at Hammock Landing opened, it was pretty obvious the old Roxy building was going to have a hard time ever becoming a theater again. That old building has now turned into one of those weird local landmarks that instantly brings people back to another time — you drive by it and you can still see the marquee structure, the palm trees, the parking lot where you used to pull in on a Friday night.

V. Frozen in Time

If you want to see what is left inside, it is genuinely haunting. The teal-green walls of the lobby are still there, still that same distinctive color that anyone who walked through those doors would recognize. The concession counter still stands, its menu boards dark, the popcorn machines long gone. Graffiti covers the walls now — spray-painted names, dates, and the words “Good Times Bad Friends” scrawled across the serving window like an epitaph no one asked for.

The concessions counter — “Good Times Bad Friends”

360-degree panorama of the abandoned Roxy lobby — teal walls, scattered debris, the concession island

The auditoriums are worse. Rows of seats still face the screen, but the screens themselves are torn and sagging, revealing the wooden framing and insulation behind them. Ceiling tiles hang loose. The blue curtains that once framed the picture are shredded. Debris covers the aisles — old popcorn boxes, papers, broken fixtures. It looks like the kind of place where time stopped in 2013 and no one ever came back to clean up.

An auditorium — seats still facing a torn and collapsed screen

VI. Why People Still Talk About It

I still think what makes the Roxy worth talking about is not just the fact that it closed. It is the memories tied to it. I remember movies like Bugsy, Friday the 13th: Jason Goes to Hell, Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump, Ransom, Toy Story, The Lion King, and Independence Day being part of that era. For a lot of us, the Roxy was part of growing up in Palm Bay. That is why people still talk about it.

The Roxy Cinema Grill 10 was not a megaplex. It was not an IMAX. It was not a luxury recliner theater with reserved seating and a cocktail menu. It was a neighborhood movie house that did its job for twenty-two years, showed thousands of films, and gave a community a place to go on a Friday night. That is enough. That is worth remembering.