Old cinema gets ready to rock again
Odeon gears up to reopen as music venue more than 50 years after Beatles and Buddy Holly took to stage
IN its heyday, the crowds flocked there to see the Beatles and Buddy Holly.
And as the Bradford Odeon prepares to enter the final stage of its redevelopment, its new operators are wondering who might be next.
With a standing capacity of 4,000, the Odeon will be less than a third the size of its giant neighbour, the First Direct Arena in Leeds, when it reopens as a music venue in two years’ time.
But it will fill a niche as one of the region’s few medium- sized auditoria for mainstream pop and rock acts, said Lee Craven, founding director of Bradford Live, which has leased the former cinema from the council.
“You’ve got arenas and you’ve got lots of small venues, but very little in the middle,” he said, citing the similarly aged Manchester O2 Apollo and the new 3,500- capacity Bonus Arena, 70 miles away in Hull, as the main competition.
The competitive tender for a contractor to fit out the Odeon is being announced on the 20th anniversary of its closure. Along with the city centre Odeon in Leeds, its business was transferred to a new multiplex at Thornbury, between the two cities.
But while the Leeds building has been repurposed for retail use, the one in Bradford has lain empty and abandoned. Only a campaign by locals who remembered having gone there in its glory days saved it from the bulldozer.
Originally the New Victoria and then the Gaumont, it was built on the site of an old brewery at the dawn of the talking picture era, and was the third largest in the country, behind London and Edinburgh.
It could host live events as well as film shows and it had a restaurant, bars and function rooms – a suite of facilities the operators plan to reinstall.
“Of all the great super- cinemas that were built in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this one in Bradford was the most ambitious,” said
Mr Craven, who runs a textile business in Bradford’s Great Horton district and fell in love with its entertainment past after taking over an adjoining warehouse that had once been the Cross Lane Picture House.
The previous phase of the renovation, stripping out years of alterations to reveal the original interior, ended last December and had been “enormously hard work”, he said. “It’s a difficult building and it keeps throwing us curve balls.
It’s been smashed about over the years and for a decade it wasn’t maintained at all. But it’s still a wonderful building and it will be a tremendous venue.”
When the fit- out contractor has finished work, the keys will be handed to the NEC Group in Birmingham, which runs a string of giant venues for their owners and has signed a 30- year deal to bring musical artists to Bradford.
“It will appeal to all types of acts,” Mr Craven said. “People who can fill arenas will still be interested in a venue this size.”
Kaiser Chiefs, who hail from up the road in Menston, had already expressed an interest, he added.
People who can fill arenas will still be interested in a venue this size. Bradford Live founding director Lee Craven.