Peyton Rhodes (Bloomberg): AMC Theater’s Valuation Was Excessive, Says Arizona Tax Court:

An AMC theater location convinced the Arizona Tax Court that it qualified for lower property tax valuation as a single-use movie theater even though it uses over a third of its auditoriums for storage.

Maricopa County, Ariz., asked the court to affirm its determination that the location was a 30-auditorium mixed used movie theater worth nearly $29 million in full cash value and $12.5 million in limited value.

However, AMC’s expert appraiser didn’t err when he limited the property’s valuation to the 17 auditoriums the theater currently uses to show films, the court determined in an unsigned opinion posted Tuesday.

AMC leases the theater located in the county, which contains Phoenix and its metropolitan area. The theater’s expert appraiser blended an income and cost analysis of the auditoriums in use and valued the property at $7.8 million.

“As AMC argues, the non-operating portion of the Property is a result of external obsolescence that is captured in the income or sales comparison approaches,” the court said.

The county appraiser’s valuation improperly blended an income analysis of the operating auditoriums with a sales comparison approach for the storage units, according to the court. It granted AMC’s motion to preclude the county’s expert appraisal for failing to evaluate the location as a single-use movie theater.

Still, the court denied both parties’ respective motions for summary judgment regarding the final valuations, finding there were still questions regarding AMC’s expert appraisal evidence and sending the case to trial.

Judge Jay Polk, who was recently assigned to the state’s tax court, will handle the case going forward.

Ryan Legal Services represented AMC.

The case is American Multi-Cinema Inc. v. Maricopa Cnty. , 2026 BL 264296, Ariz. Tax Ct., No. TX 2022-000365, 7/9/26.