He has kept on the entire staff and the business will continue to be run by the Struckle’s manager.įor their part Karen and Don have agreed to stay on as consultants to the business. She said Tran does not plan any major changes. They are family-oriented and it is still going to be a family-friendly business. Karen said the new owners, Pocono Township’s Steve Tran and his wife, Lihn Thuc Lu, “couldn’t be nicer. In an era when independent first-run movie theaters all but disappeared, the Casino survived, and even thrived. Innovations include serving food to patrons while they watched their movies, the old-fashioned soda and ice cream shop, miniature golf, and, during the pandemic, inventing the concept of renting the screens to small groups of gamers and families for private video parties. The Struckles, who have been operating the theater under a lease from Karen’s father, reinvented the business along the way. Her family’s two-generation long tenure with the downtown Mount Pocono mainstay is bookended by the destruction of the original 1920-era building soon after Litz bought the property in 1975, and a once a century pandemic temporarily shuttering the movie business 45 years later. “It’s bittersweet,” Karen told us a week after her father, George Litz, completed the sale of the Casino Theatre and Village Malt Shoppe.

MOUNT POCONO - For practically the first time since she was a young teenager, Karen Struckle can visit with family and enjoy playing tennis on a pleasant fall afternoon. According to Karen Struckle, Litz’s daughter, who operated the theater with her husband, Don Struckle, under a lease agreement with Litz, the new owners are retaining all of the Casino’s employees and its manager and intend to maintain the business as a family-oriented movie, food, and entertainment venue. After 46 years, George Litz sold the Casino Theatre in downtown Mount Pocono on September 29, 2021, to Pocono Township’s Steve Tran and his wife, Lihn Thuc Lu.

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