Campaigners have accused the city council of “hanging a £37 million culture wrecking ball over our heads” amid plans to demolish Oxford’s last Odeon cinema.
Oxford City Council announced plans earlier this month to convert the site of the Odeon in George Street into an aparthotel and community hub at a cost of £37 million.
This proposal has provoked a fierce backlash from supporters of the arts, who have argued the council is “letting Oxford’s cultural scene die” and is not doing enough to create accessible spaces for young people to pursue their talents.
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Odeon Cinema’s lease at the George Street site runs out in September next year, with a spokesman confirming the council intends to move ahead with plans to redevelop the site into a new community hub and accommodation.
A spokesman for the cinema company confirmed it was hoping to secure jobs for as many of their staff in other local cinemas.
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This cinema will be the third Odeon cinema closure in Oxfordshire after its 99-year-old Magdalen Street theatre closed as well as a venue in Banbury.
The only remaining city centre cinema will be the Curzon in the Westgate. Further afield are the Vue at the Kassam Stadium, Phoenix Picturehouse in Jericho and the Ultimate Picture Palace in East Oxford.
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Paul Wightman, a grassroots music and arts campaigner, said the council had not “consulted properly” with the community as more than 150 people had attended four public meetings which were organised to bring together concerned residents.
Mr Wightman said: “The council is holding a £37 million culture wrecking ball over our heads.
“We have lost so many places of popular culture and there is not a single grassroots music venue in Oxford’s centre. That is an embarrassing and shocking situation.”
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Mr Wightman believes the University of Oxford and the city council needed to “sit down and think long and hard about the root causes of the devastation of Oxford’s cultural scene”.
The council said the building of an 145-room aparthotel on the upper five floors of the building, with a café and bar on the ground floor, would persuade more tourists to stay overnight in Oxford.
However, Mr Wightman has argued the opposite is true.
He said: “The lack of overnight visitors is more related to the lack of night venues in the city.
“Too many buildings are lost to developers who want to build student accommodation.
“There is a monopoly on property in Oxford instead of an eco-system which is managed holistically.”
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Aparthotel rooms are different from normal hotel rooms as they offer furnished apartments with an en-suite kitchen featuring a cooker and fridge.
A new lease and contract could be signed as early as August or September and the council aims to secure planning permission for the new building by the summer of 2024.
Chris Richmond, who lives in Barton and works for the charity Age UK, warned the proposal will lead to the loss of a “cultural hub” which many children growing up in Oxford enjoy.
He said: “Oxford is becoming a tourist trap and we are shutting a lot of places which would be attractive to tourists.
“We are not short of hotel space and the area was a nice space for young people to go to without their parents in tow.”
Campaigners have complained the council has been “secretive” in the way it has put together proposals for the building, without “enough input from householders who love the cultural site”.
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Deputy leader of the city council, Ed Turner, said: “We are proud to be supporting, not reducing, Oxford’s cultural scene with this excellent project which will both provide overnight accommodation to people to stay in Oxford and provide a new cultural space.
“It will also provide much-needed income to the city council, which we can continue to support, for example, grants to grassroots cultural organisations – something we still offer in Oxford but which have ended in many places.
“It is a source of real regret that some live music venues have closed and the city council has made representations on this point.
"We should not talk down Oxford’s live music scene though, as there remain some excellent venues, and we are very open to discussion about how to support this vital sector.”
He added: “The proposal has been worked up in accordance with strategies that have been consulted on, although necessarily public engagement has to be limited in order to comply with procurement frameworks at the moment.
It is our intention to consult very fully on the proposed cultural space once the project is at that stage.
“At the same time, this is a commercial asset and it was essential we started planning early for the time that the Odeon’s lease came to an end, otherwise there could have been major financial ramifications for the city council.”
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Kaspar Suprinen, 16, joined the protest outside the Town Hall on Monday.
He accused the council of launching a “concerted attack against community spaces and leisure”.
He said: “The Odeon cinema was a space where working class people could afford to go.
“Their proposal is only going to disadvantage young people as there will be less spaces where we can go to express ourselves and pursue artistic interests.”
Editor of Oxford music magazine Nightshift, Ronan Munro, said the council was simply “indifferent” to creating new music venues and he said it was letting anything which was left of Oxford’s music scene to die.
He said: “Oxford has produced some of the biggest bands in the world in the last 30 years, including Supergrass, Foals and Ride.
“Students come to the universities in Oxford because a lot of the time they want to join a band but that is no longer going to be possible.
“The council is letting Oxford’s music scene die and the University of Oxford is chasing money over culture.”
Campaigners at the Town Hall said the council had not done enough to “reach out to residents” and the city was becoming a place which only “catered to students and tourists”.
Logan, 20, a student who did not wish to reveal his surname, said he was concerned the council was “intent on destroying public spaces”.
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