Apartments plan for cinema is on hold
Proposal to demolish Art Deco former cinema
DISCUSSIONS are still taking place over plans to turn the Art Deco former Cannon cinema in Hinckley into flats and shops.
A planning application was submitted eight months ago but has yet to come before borough councillors.
The bid, to demolish the building and create a brick and glass apartment block with retail units on the ground floor, is being modified on the advice of planning officers.
Locals were unhappy about with the submission, particularly as only 18 parking spaces were allotted to cater for 29 flats, 10 with one bedroom, 14 with two bedrooms and five featuring three bedrooms.
A petition organised by neighbours cited existing problems with on-street parking, expected to worsen should the proposal go ahead.
Ward councillor Stuart Bray (Lib Dem, Hinckley Trinity) said: “Planning officers have asked the developers to look again at the design. When it first came in the size of it and the impact it would have on neighbouring properties as well as the woeful lack of parking was quite evident.
“In general I am getting fed up with parking issues in the town centre. There is the old cinema, the former social services building where flats are being built and the application for the Elements Nightclub and there is just not enough parking spaces.
“The argument is, backed up by Government guidance, that if you build in an urban centre people will walk to work and not need cars but that is not the real world. When you have two or three-bedroom flats the chances are it will mean the owners will have two or three cars and yet developers are only providing one space if that.”
The iconic structure with its curved facade on the corner of Trinity Lane and Hollycroft has been disused since its last incarnation, a sports bar, which closed down more than a decade ago.
Despite it being recognised as an important feature of the Hollycroft conservation area, the building is in a serious state of decay.
Developers behind the flats plan, which would soar to five storeys on the curve of the site, say the design and layout of the 80-year-old building is unsuitable for conversion.
The regeneration of the site follows the approval of plans to turn both the former Leicestershire County Council offices nearby on Upper Bond Street and the old police station opposite into flats - although both those schemes relied on retaining the existing fabric of both buildings.
The existing Art Deco cinema building was constructed on the site of a former hosiery factory in 1936 to designs by Ernest S Roberts, a prolific cinema architect in the Birmingham area.
It opened as the Danilo Cinema on July 26 1937, part of a chain owned by Mortimer Dent, including those at Brierley Hill, Redditch, Cannock, Longbridge, Stoke-on-Trent and Stourbridge and was seen as a ‘luxury’ theatre house with 1,250 seats.
In 1970 it was rebranded as the Essoldo and in 1972 was bought by Classic Cinemas and so renamed again. In August 1973 it was turned into a threescreen cinema, later becoming the Cannon, which in turn closed in May 1993, the last functioning cinema in the town before the launch of Cineworld in 2015.
It was subsequently a sports bar but has been disused for more than a decade.