Genesis Cinema to be redeveloped to include student housing
Pandemic, strikes and cost of living force Mile End’s Genesis Cinema to redevelop its site into housing – but is our treasured cinema safe?
The independent Genesis Cinema in Mile End is in the first phases of redevelopment into student housing after what owner and manager Tyrone Walker-Hebborn described as ‘a really tough four years.’
Voted the UK’s best cinema in 2016, a combination blow of Covid, energy prices Hollywood strikes and a cost of living crisis have made running Genesis financially challenging.
Communications company Local Dialogue, who is presenting plans and gathering feedback on behalf of Genesis, told The Slice ‘We are looking to submit the [planning] application in early spring this year.’
Mock-ups of the potential re-development show the frontage of Genesis expanded to include six stories of student housing, in a complimentary style to the existing Art-deco building.
Plans are to move the cinema into the basement level of the building with a potential extra bar added into a new sub-basement floor. Lifts will be added for accessibility. The main entrance will remain on the ground floor, which will also retain its bar and cafe. Above will be 340 student bedrooms, with a combination of studio and shared flats.
The restructured Genesis will have four overall screens mimicking the current layout, with one large screen, two medium screens and a small one with sofas. There will be roughly 500 seats, a reduction from the current 762 – however, Walker-Hebborn says the reduced seats will be enough to meet typical sales. New kitchen and event spaces will both grow larger, meaning more space for the creative events that are increasingly in demand at Genesis.
‘We’ve been approached for years and years about selling the building, but we’ve never been interested,’ Walker-Hebborn explained, ‘We don’t want to put a massive tower block on there, I don’t want to do it to earn tens and millions of pounds, we want to do it just enough to keep things running.’
A significant share of Genesis Cinema’s profits is usually reinvested in maintaining the space, but Walker-Hebborn said setbacks have made this impossible for the past four years. He estimated that restoring the building to standard would now cost between £3-5 million.
Walker-Hebborn has been running Genesis for 25 years and is currently consulting architects, neighbours and cultural institutions like Heritage England before setting anything in stone. ‘The best way we can see forward is to provide student accommodation, which then relieves social housing pressure around us,’ he said.
No official contracts have been made with developers yet, but when it happens it will be a joint venture. ‘Genesis will still be there, I will still be owning it and running it, we’re just trading the air above it,’ he said.
If you liked this read The genesis of Genesis: from abandoned theatre to nation’s favourite indie cinema
Don’t believe the hype! This opportunistic framing – “saving” the cinema while actually demolishing the original building?! Does it not deserve to be protected? We’re being mislead to claim this protects Genesis when it erases its historic character and replaces it with a capitalist private equity development to make the owner rich (was this the plan the whole time) I remember when Genesis was more community focused and do we need more overinflated student lets? Are they not being ripped off enough? I can’t see Rio ever doing anything like this? Wake up and smell the coffee! This is not for the community – this is another example of greedy gentrification.
I’m seeing zero evidence or fact – or even logic – in that comment, sorry. No one is getting rich from running cinemas right now, least of all community venues. I work in the industry and see the data, but even a bit of Googling rubbishes this reactive and ill-informed response. Cinemas are closing around the country in case you haven’t noticed (recent London closures include: Catford Mews, Ealing Project, Empire Walthamstow, Fulham Road & Stratford Picturehouses, Odeon Covent Garden – and Camden coming) with many many more vocally struggling or under threat, including Prince Charles and Curzon Mayfair. Admissions are up from last year but still way short of pre-pandemic levels; and, outside the tentpole releases, mid-market and the independent films that Genesis support are competing with streaming, films going early to home entertainment and more. In addition, cinemas have been hit hard in recent years with rising inflation and utility costs (as have we all), and staffing costs/NI, including leases that are set at pre-COVID levels of business. The gentrification of an independent cinema is frankly a ridiculous concept. I’d say direct those accusations towards Everyman, but maybe check their stock price first. Despite being the quickest cinema group to recover after lockdown with strong growth and profit/revenues (from posh food and the advantage of mainstream programming, by the way) their shares are struggling around 40p, when they were 160pm in 2021. And comparison to the Rio is extremely ill-informed. The Rio is Grade II listed and a charity, and it’s this status that enabled it to raise money through donations and grants to create a second screen and refurbish the bar. And even so it has endured incredibly difficult times in recent years, but survives because of public support and the insane dedication and commitment of their team. If gentrification is getting a nice bar then well played – on the Rio’s FAQ page they explain that ticket sales do not fund the cinema, but the new cafe-bar does. I don’t know the new Genesis design plans other than the article above, but I can imagine the situation they must be in and why adding new revenues to their business/building could be essential to avoid extinction. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen, and that there’s informed debate and not just people posting the first thing that comes into their head.