Fears grow over future of landmark 86-year-old Art Deco cinema in Edinburgh
Council officials say no defective building notice should be served
It once lit up the skies over the Firth of Forth with its neon-lit Art Deco frontage and has been at the centre of a near decade-long campaign to save it for future generations.
But the future of an historic Portobello cinema has been thrown into doubt after Edinburgh City Council officials decided against serving a defective building notice on its owners, who in turn say the structure is dangerous and cannot be repaired, according to the local authority.
Fears have been mounting for years over the viability of the listed George Cinema, which has lain empty for around nine years.
Amid thwarted efforts by a community group to purchase the building and reopen it as an independent, commercially-run cinema in the Edinburgh suburb, the concerns have intensified after local authority planners pointed to an apparent hole in the building’s roof.
The council had initially said that unless the owners of the former cinema made the building wind and watertight, it would give consideration to whether a repair notice should be put in place.
But officials now say no such action should be taken, reasoning there is no guarantee the works would reduce water ingress or reduce the rate at which the building is deteriorating.
Instead, they point out that if planning permission was granted for redevelopment as flats, as the owners have indicated they intend to do, the resultant works would “contribute to the city’s housing stock”.
The recommendation to not issue a defective building notice under section 28 of the Building (Scotland) Act 2003 will have to be ratified by councillors at a meeting of the local authority’s planning committee on Wednesday.
But those campaigning to preserve the building’s future criticised the stance taken by council officials.
Friends of The George is a community campaign group and charity striving to revive the landmark as a “community-oriented cinema” with three screens, a café-bar and space for conferences, meetings and educational use.
A group spokesperson said: “We are incredibly disappointed that council officials have apparently decided it is acceptable for the owner of a listed building to pursue what some might describe as a strategy of ‘demolition via neglect’.
“The suggestion in the report that the damage is already done and there is ‘no guarantee’ that fixing holes in the flat roof will arrest water ingress entirely and prevent further deterioration stretches credulity.
“Friends of The George have a viable plan to restore this valued local landmark - a listed building and the last art deco building in Portobello - into a commercially run, community-focused cinema that would contribute to the social wellbeing and the economic resilience of the area.
“There continues to be widespread opposition from the local community to this iconic building being demolished and redeveloped into luxury flats, while a viable alternative use for the building exists.”
The cinema originally opened in 1939, with a screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs its first feature. The building welcomed generations of filmgoers before being concerted into a bingo hall in the 1970s.
Buckley Building UK Ltd, the building’s owners, did not respond to a request for comment.
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