EMD update and myths debunked

We're not just fighting height... we're fighting for the future of the EMD cinema in the face of the Arcade plans. The cinema issue is still alive - over 300 protestors (pictured) recently demonstrated outside the EMD to oppose council plans for a rival multiplex with a huge £884,000 subsidy in the Arcade development.
Anyone with a brain can see it's madness to build a new multiplex when the beautiful Grade 2* listed EMD cinema is sitting empty just two doors down. Sadly councillors - even those who promised to fight for the EMD - aren't doing anything about it. That's because they have been misinformed. They've been told that the UCKG church, which still owns the EMD, has failed to find a buyer for it. And that the cinema would be too expensive to refurbish. Here's the facts to debunk those myths...

Let's debunk those myths!
Firstly, yes the church still owns the building and has put it on the market twice without selling it. But that doesn't mean they haven't had reasonable offers. In fact we're in touch with not one but two people who have offered seven-figure sums to buy the EMD! One was so serious that he even had a heads of terms agreement signed with a cinema operator to run the EMD. Of course, the UCKG isn't obliged to sell. And considering the church paid way over the odds for the building (£2.8m compared with the £1.5m that a survey said it was worth) there's a danger they might expect to receive a similar inflated sum for it. What's the answer? Simple, the council should use its Compulsory Purchase Order powers to buy the cinema from the church at market value.
Secondly, we dispute the idea that it would cost more to refurbish the EMD than to build a new cinema. The council did commission consultants to research the cost of refurbishment... but we get the feeling that they delivered the answers that they were asked for. We've spoken to a number of experts who say that refurbishment is perfectly viable. Oh and while we're debunking myths, the illegal rave held in the cinema shortly after the UCKG took posession didn't cause any major damage that would affect this.
So what do we think the council should do about it? Far from being anti development on the Arcade site, we believe the site should be expanded - by compulsory purchasing both the HSBC bank building and the cinema - and then developed in a way that suits the residents of Walthamstow as well as council coffers. Rather than piling it high and throwing in a cheap cinema, what we need is a good quality development, that isn't too tall to fit in to the surrounding area, linked to a great new cinema within a refurbished EMD.

What does all this have to do with the Arcade?
Even if you don't think the EMD should be annexed to the Arcade, there's no changing the fact that the two sites' fates are intertwined. The council has agreed with preferred developer St Modwen that if their building includes a 1,400-seat multiplex cinema it will reduce the eventual sale price of the site by £884,000 - this represents a massive public subsidy which the council’s own documentation admits would “effectively equate to an equivalent spend by the council”.
For more info on the EMD, visit www.mcguffin.info