The cinema has now been demolished but work has stopped.

We are waiting a statement from the Council as to what is happening on the Town Hall project.

Cineworld in King Street have finally announced the formal closure to make way for the Town Hall Redevelopment Scheme. This will close in Mid. April.

To many of us this will be a sad loss with many family memories. A small replacement cinema complex is promised as part of the later phase of the Town Hall scheme. In the meantime, we will have no local cinema and Riverside Studios is not due to re-open for a couple of years.

As I reported in my last News Update, the Cineworld Cinema is due to close imminently and work will start on its demolition. A planning application has now been received by the Council in respect of revised details for the housing and new offices on the west side of Nigel Playfair Avenue. The planning reference number is 2016/00619/VAR. The consultation period is open to 18 April. Your committee will be commenting. Initial indications are that not all the changes are positive unfortunately.

In the next few weeks, you can expect to see the closing of the Cineworld Cinema in King Street. Many have used this for all our years of living in Hammersmith. This will mark the commencement of the Town Hall/King Street Regeneration Project. The revised and generally more popular mixed use scheme was approved back in November 2013. It will be a phased scheme providing replacement offices for the Council where the cinema is now, about 200 new residential units, a new public square with shops, restaurants and a new Curzon cinema. No doubt there will be publicity and more specific information on the programming of the project.  Watch this space!

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News in brief . . . .

Triangle Site : The last commercial scheme was refused permission:  A new residential scheme has been submitted but officers are waiting for additional information before the scheme is ‘validated’ and consultations can commence.

Walkabout Site : The developers (Dorsett Hotel) are in the process of setting up consultation on a new scheme prepared by the architects for the hotel conversion and not the perpetrators of the much disliked 16 storey tower.

Cambridge Grove : Former piano and aircraft factory : Currently offices behind Banim Street – to stay as offices. Pre-app. consultations with the developers/architect are on going including a site visit. There are contentious items on the scheme to be resolved.

Savoy Circus : We have written criticising the external appearance of a student hostel scheme (but not the principle) on the site of the former cinema/bingo hall on the corner of Westway/Old Oak Road. It is an important gateway coming into Hammersmith.

Latymer Boat House : We have responded to an application to refurbish and update the 1960s glazed building on the Mall. The plans also involve an extension at the side adjacent to Latymer House which is a Building of Merit. Generally we liked the scheme but have one or two concerns around the location of the extension.

Town Hall Development : It seems that the revised scheme will finally commence on site in the spring with demolition of the Cineworld cinema as the first phase. (There is to be a replacement cinema in due course). Some details are currently being reviewed.

Improved proposals adopted and planning permission granted

There was very welcome news in July 2013 when the Council announced that it was withdrawing its plans for the Town Hall redevelopment. The new leader, Cllr Nick Botterill, said the Council would be going back to the drawing board, that new proposals for the site would go no higher than the Town Hall extension and it would listen to residents and amenity groups in order to find a more acceptable solution. The footbridge over the A4 will no longer be part of the scheme. That, and the reduced height, will be a tremendous relief to local residents.

Meanwhile we and Save Our Skyline will be pressing for an early meeting with the Council to seek to ensure a good design solution to this vexed site and to incorporate retention of the cinema in a reinvigorated form to give real regenerative boost to the area. Many congratulations are due to Save Our Skyline for their highly effective campaign without which this turnaround would not have happened, and to all the thousands of residents who wrote and emailed the Council, the Mayor of London and the Government.