OUR PATCH SPRING 2018
LOCAL
LIFE
King Street cinema
at town hall site
F
FRESH FLICKS
our years from now, film fans
should be settling into their
seats in a new cinema as part
of the Hammersmith Town
Hall redevelopment. The site
on which the old cinema
once stood is empty and the days of
the unloved town hall extension
are numbered.
Feedback from two rounds of
consultation on the plans has been
incorporated into the new designs,
guided by an independent panel of
residents. A final set of plans are being
drawn up and if permission is granted,
building will start later this year.
With underground car parking, full
disabled access and redesigned public
space, the new town hall plans include
a modern cinema on the site. The
old cinema near the town hall was a
Cineworld for 20 years, although the
16 / 17
three-storey art deco building dated
from the mid 1930s. The very first
‘picture theatre’ on the site was The Blue
Halls, which opened in December 1912.
The following year it was extended
into the car park area at the back of
the present building, by the Great West
Road. The art deco cinema opened in
September 1936.
The proposed triple-screen Curzon
cinema will not only serve residents in
Hammersmith, but will now have to
serve as the new cinema for Stamford
Brook and Chiswick, too. That’s because
the delayed plans for a five-screen
Picturehouse on the site of the former
Rambert Dance Company site in
Chiswick High Road have finally been
abandoned by the cinema chain.
Originally, the Chiswick Lane
Picturehouse – 500 metres from
Turnham Green tube station – had been
designed with a series of different-sized
auditoriums, the largest holding 420
people, the smallest just 16.
But Picturehouse has now pulled
out. We called their head office in
Covent Garden and was told by an
employee said the deal was ‘dead’.
The new town hall plans
include a modern cinema
on the Hammersmith site
They refused to elaborate, and further
calls and emails were not returned. We
also spoke to Kim Gottlieb, landlord of a
portion of the High Road site, who said
he was ‘still hoping’ that a new cinema
operator would join the scheme but that
it was ‘complicated’ – and declined to
comment further.
However, West London’s cinemagoers