Ex-Zanzibar building put up for rent
DOWNSTAIRS RESTAURANT WILL BE UNAFFECTED BY ANY CHANGES
PART of an Art Deco-style building in Derby city centre, formerly home to two cinemas and most recently the Zanzibar nightclub, has been put on the market.
The upper floors have been made available for rent at No.45 London Road, where the well-known Cosmo restaurant trades downstairs.
The Asian world food restaurant will continue to operate as normal, unaffected by any changes which potentially happen upstairs.
The upper floors are being marketed by Raybould & Sons, which is not necessarily looking to let the space out as a nightclub, and is instead inviting offers for a variety of different uses.
The Derby-based commercial property agent is therefore not offering a specific price for the premises “as different uses have different values” and rental offers will be considered on their own merits, a spokesman confirmed.
The units are accessible via ground floor doors which are located either side of the Cosmo entrance.
The building first opened in September 1934, during a golden age of cinema as the Gaumont Palace. With its 500 tons of steel, 5,000 tons of concrete and a million bricks, it took more than a year to build, but was a breathtaking addition to Derby.
There was a large Compton Theatre organ and a spacious restaurant above the foyer that was later home to a dance studio.
In 1965, the Gaumont was renamed the Odeon (after the closure of the old Odeon on St Peter’s Street) and later renamed the ABC
Trocadero Entertainment Centre.
It changed its name one final time when it became the Cannon, but its life in the movies was now almost at an end.
Two of its screens were converted into a bingo hall, and in the late 1980s, after a ceiling collapsed in the auditorium, it was closed, initially temporarily. But it never reopened. Only the dance school remained.
At the turn of the 21st century, the building was substantially renovated and reopened as Zanzibar nightclub.
Cosmo’s Derby restaurant first opened in May 2013, and underwent a major refurbishment back in 2019. It saw a larger open-plan dining area introduced, as well as revamped cooking stations and a huge Japanese mural.
Each of the 300 seats were replaced or reupholstered, as new booth seating areas and leather benches were also added during the refit.
Those with a sweet tooth were delighted to hear that the dessert counter got bigger.
Earlier this year, Cosmo was crowned Best Restaurant Multi-Site at the 2022 Golden Chopsticks Awards. The Derby venue was recognised alongside the chain’s other 19 branches across the UK, including in Manchester, Wolverhampton, Glasgow and Belfast.