[keswick]

A historic cinema in Liverpool is to be demolished to make way for a discount supermarket.

The Art Deco style former Curzon Cinema in Prescot Road, Old Swan will be knocked down and replaced with a Home Bargains store, after plans were today approved by councillors.

The company said the development would retain 25 existing jobs in the area and create 30 new jobs for local people.

Speaking at a Liverpool Council planning meeting, Tom Warner, from Home Bargains, said the existing building was "substandard".

He said it would not meet modern shop requirements due to its low ceilings and "irregular internal arrangements".

Mr Warner added that refurbishment costs were "prohibitively expensive" and the firm was paying for ongoing emergency repairs to make the building safe.

Architect Brian Ireland, of Glasgow-based Smith Design Associates, said water was leaking into the cinema and brickwork was becoming loose in its upper walls.

He said the new building would be lower than the existing structure and incorporate some of the style of the former cinema.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news...urzon-cinema-old-7079331#.U2khIo4GmRs.twitter

 

[keswick]

Sadly not a surprising development for an area of the city that's had the heart and soul completely ripped out of it in the name of supermarket expansion......surely to God someone in any number of successive councils could have had the foresight and imagination to do something positive for Old Swan with this beautiful building?...instead its gone down the usual spirit-sapping path of being left to rot and ruin in order to justify the (anyname) developers demolition calls........scandalous

Strange that its not even been grade listed. I'm sure it features in a few English Art Deco books?
Considering I've lived pretty much all my life in Old Swan - would love to get the chance to have a nosy in the above 'unchanged' rooms??

 

[keswick]

They argued in the documents that the tiles and the clock are art-deco-ish...

Pretty s**t argument? The mind boggles how they can pull the wool over folks eyes. Art Deco is of an age - particular age - anything else is a pastiche, and judging by those plans, a very substandard pastiche!

 

[keswick]

They demolished an authentic Art Deco building and replaced it with an awful faux Art Deco building. Pointless exercise.