A £4.2 million Angus community cinema project has taken a major step forward after a £1 a year lease deal for a local landmark was agreed.
Montrose Playhouse Project will pay the peppercorn rent for the town’s former swimming pool after Angus Council approved its application for the community asset transfer.
The project was the brainchild of architect David Paton who had been sketching out plans for a cinema in old, disused buildings for several years.
He said: “After careful consideration, we have taken the decision to demolish the old pool and rebuild a new purpose built cultural arts facility housing four digital cinema screens, conference space, multi-purpose rooms, rentable office space and caf bar with on-site parking.
“The projected cost of the project is in excess of £4.2m and will require major fundraising on our part, however we are confident that with hard work and dedication, we, along with our many supporters, can make this project come alive.
“We will be posting our new plans on the Montrose Library notice boards from Wednesday June 10 for a period of two weeks.”
The project began after Mr Paton posted some of his conceptual designs on social media to see what kind of response they would receive.
Within just a few hours around 500 people had ‘liked’ the post and were vociferous in their calls for him to try to make this dream a reality.
He set up a working group and a funding drive has been launched to raise the £4.2m needed.
A number of community consultations have been carried out by the organisation, and support for the cinema has been illustrated through Facebook activity with 4,000 ‘likes’.
There were also more than 1,000 responses to an online survey and overwhelming support from school pupils. The project has been active in applying for and attracting external grant funding.
Initial start-up funding was awarded by First Port and the National Lottery Investing in Ideas which has enabled the project to set itself up as a charity, employ a specialist cinema consultant and establish a website.
The former Montrose swimming pool has been vacant since the opening of the £9m Montrose sports centre, and was declared surplus by the council in January 2013.
At that time the site was considered for affordable housing but the estimated high cost of clearing the site meant this option was discounted.
The building was marketed for sale thereafter but no offers were received and in October 2013 a stage one application for community asset transfer was submitted by Montrose Playhouse Project.