Major plans to demolish an historic city centre cinema and replace it with an aparthotel have been met with growing "dismay' from locals.

Applicant Marick Real Estate Limited submitted the scheme to Oxford City Council for the former Odeon cinema in George Street in June. 

The aparthotel will feature around 145 rooms, and these will be built on the upper five stories of the building, with a reception on the ground floor, including a bar and café.

Aparthotel rooms are different from those at a normal hotel as they offer furnished apartments, with an en-suite kitchen featuring a cooker and fridge.

Objections are now growing as groups and householders come out against the plans.

A total of 12 objections have been submitted from campaign groups and members of the public. One of the sticking points is the preservation of the Newbury Abbot Trent relief. 

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Existing Odeon building (Image: Oxford City Council) Sally Thomas, who lives in Gloucester Green nearby, said: “I wish to express my dismay (also expressed to me by several fellow residents) about the plans to build such a huge edifice along one side of the only remaining square of a significant size in Oxford.

"We note that the Gloucester Green side of the proposed building is earmarked for cycle parking and for refuse storage which, from the beginning, we asked should be kept indoors with an outlet onto George Street to be opened at the time when the refuse vehicle was there.

"To regard Gloucester Green as the backyard of the proposed building is unacceptable.”

Another objector Malcolm Graham, of Montagu Road in Botley, said: “The Odeon cinema building will perhaps not be missed but the sculpture on the east elevation should be preserved.

"The loss of another city centre cinema is however a blow to residents and visitors and a redevelopment incorporating a cinema would have been preferable.

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CGI of aparthotel plans (Image: Oxford City Council) “The main reason for rejecting the proposal is (or should be) that it is completely wrong to build an aparthotel for tourists on city-owned land when the local demand for housing is so acute.”

An objection was also received from the Twentieth Century Society which campaigns to save important heritage buildings. The former cinema dates back to the 1930s. 

In the applicant's planning statement, it said: “Irrespective of Odeon’s decision to leave Oxford, it is demonstrated through the application that a cinema use is no longer viable within the existing building in the current market.

"Therefore, this loss does not result in a conflict with the development plan.

“Once operational, the proposals will provide 33 net additional FTE permanent jobs once fully operational, and result in additional GVA to the Oxford economy of £1.9 million annually in perpetuity.”