Leading heritage groups are making last-minute protests against plans to tear down one of Leicester Square’s oldest cinemas.
The Art Deco Odeon West End opened in 1930, survived bombing in the Second World War, and now hosts the BFI London Film Festival.
Westminster council will next Tuesday decide on proposals to replace the cinema and buildings on the south-west of the square with a ten-storey block housing a hotel, spa and a two-screen cinema for Edwardian Group, owner of the Radisson Edwardian hotel chain.
Objectors include the Ancient Monuments Society, which said the plan was an “irreversible loss of heritage assets”. English Heritage said the project “strikes at the heart of the heritage significance of the conservation area”, while the Cinema Theatre Association said the cinema was of “significant architectural merit”.
The Greater London Authority, the Twentieth Century Society, the Theatres Trust and the Victorian Society also oppose the plan.
Rob Steul, of architect Woods Bagot, said its plans fit “socially and architecturally into the fabric of the West End cinematic experience”.
