The Long Awaited Cinema For Chiswick Is Going Ahead
Chiswickw4.com can reveal that work on the cinema will start next month
CGI of the 'Chiswick Lane' Picturehouse plan
Chiswick will finally gets its cinema, Chiswickw4.com can reveal. Building work is expected to start next month and it is hoped the cinema will open in 2019.
An agreement between the freeholder of the site and the cinema backers has been reached, and the work on an independent five screen cinema, with a terraced bar and cafe, will shortly be underway at the former Ballet Rambert site on Chiswick High Road.
Chiswick residents will be invited to suggest a name for the cinema as part of involving the local community. The entrepreneur behind the project, Lyn Goleby, visited the Green Days fete this Saturday (9 June) where a stall with a model of the project attracted a good deal of attention.
You can go on their Facebook page if you wish to do this.
Invited on stage at the festival by Torin Douglas, Ms Goleby drew cheers and applause when she told the public that the cinema was finally going ahead.
The project has at times looked as if it would never get off the ground, but was revived recently by Ms Goleby, the co-founder and former Managing Director of the Picturehouse chain. She left Picturehouse in 2017 after twenty-five years, to pursue new interests in independent cinema in the UK. She joked yesterday that the Chiswick cinema would be her 'retirement project'.
Sources had told us that Hounslow Council were informed last week that all negotiations had been successfully concluded and with the legal issues and financial backing sorted, the backers had the go-ahead to get on with the work.
The news that there was progress on the deadlocked cinema project was broken by ChiswickW4.com some weeks ago, when we spotted that a company of which Ms Goleby is the sole director - Jubilacion Limited - had lodged a planning application with Hounslow Council on 25 April for a ‘cantilevered steel structure with integrated lightning system' at the front of the former Ballet Rambert site. There were also local reports that a party wall agreement had been signed by the owner of the building where the cinema is to be built and with a business premises next door.
Lyn Goleby at the Green Days fete
The application was described as a modification of the design in the original planning permission P/2016/3850 which was granted in 2016 to Lochstill, a company owned by Kim Gottlieb, the property developer who owns part of the site. (Mr. Gottlieb is also behind the controversial 'Chiswick Curve' project for a 32-storey skyscraper development on Chiswick High Road which is the subject of a Planning Inquiry starting next week.)
It is anticipated that the original firm of architects used for the first planning application, will be involved. Lyn Goleby is is currently involved in the conversion of a bingo hall in Bury St Edmunds to provide extra screens for the Abbeygate Cinema.
City Screen (which became Picturehouse) was started in 1989 and became the UK’s leading independent cinema operator. In 2012 Picturehouse was sold to Cineworld and Lyn Goleby continued to be responsible for the growth of Picturehouse, including the property and design aspects of the cinemas.
In February 2017 Lyn Goleby acquired Picturehouse’s distribution business in a management buyout with personnel from the existing Picturehouse team including Marc Allenby. The new company was bought by Sir Howard Panter (chair of the Rambert Dance Company) and Rosemary Squire OBE, who own Trafalgar Entertainment . It was renamed Trafalgar Releasing.
Picturehouse bought the 6,500sq ft dance studio site at 96-98 Chiswick High Road from Rambert Dance Company for £1.5 million in 2013. It is understood that Kim Gottlieb owns 94 Chiswick High Road.
The first plan for redevelopment of the two buildings to create five screens with seating for 420 people was put forward by Picturehouse for approval in 2014 and while it was granted planning permission, no work was done on the site. In 2016 a new plan was submitted by Lochstill, with the cinema complex remaining the same size but with more space for flats added. Picturehouse was sold to Cineworld two years ago.
It appeared that discussions between Picturehouse and Kim Gottlieb broke down at some point and with the change in management in Picturehouse, there appeared to be less interest from the cinema group in the project. However, that was revived when Ms Goleby became personally involved in the project .
When the idea for a cinema was first mooted, there was some opposition from local residents in nearby streets, who were concerned about parking. They may now argue that the current CPZ which expires at 7 pm, be extended later into the evening.
However, overall, the news that the cinema is finally coming to Chiswick will be widely welcomed amongst the local population, particularly with cinema plans in Acton and Hammersmith suffering delays.
June 16, 2018