Could empty Art Deco cinema become ‘Edinburgh’s White Elephant’?
Fears grow for the future of the Southside's former Odeon
Sixteen years ago Stefan King saw independent cinemas as the future.
The millionaire nightclub owner turned property mogul had made a success of the Grosvenor cinema in Glasgow’s West End. The historic cinema off cobbled Ashton Lane had been a big hit since he bought and reopened it almost a decade earlier, writes Emma Newlands.
Its winning formula - which continues to work today - seemed on the surface straightforward to duplicate. A storied venue within spitting distance of the historic university and its growing student population, it mixed accessible art house screenings with more mainstream releases, had big, comfy seats, a licensed bar and good food.
In Edinburgh, King first tried to buy the Cameo in Tollcross with the idea of reportedly turning its main auditorium into a bar-restaurant, before turning his attention to the Odeon in the Southside.
When he bought the empty Odeon in 2014, it was not an isolated purchase. The deal was part of a strategy to build a chain of independent cinemas across the country, taking over existing venues, bringing old ones back to life and creating brand new picture houses.
His G1 Group hired a “cinema development manager” to help drive the plans forward.
He bought Perth’s long-running Playhouse cinema and drew up plans to reopen the historic and eccentrically-named White Elephant Cinema in Glasgow’s Shawlands. The White Elephant once boasted a ballroom and restaurant alongside the big screen, but had not been used as a cinema since the 1960s. More recently, it had been run as a nightclub by G1, but now it seemed its glory days might be ahead of it again.
The beautiful Art Deco Odeon in South Clerk Street would be the chain’s first Edinburgh venue.
The plans for the White Elephant and the Odeon stalled. Still sitting empty in 2023, the White Elephant suffered severe damage when the building was set alight, leaving it a burned-out shell.
Despite work being carried out in recent years to shore up the historic building, the Odeon still sits empty. It is 12 years since King bought it and more than 20 years since it was last in regular use.
Concerns are growing for its future. That inevitably includes the fear that the longer it sits empty the greater the risk it could fall prey to fire, like the White Elephant and a string of other historic buildings in Edinburgh and Glasgow in recent years.
King’s biggest uncompleted project
A lot has happened in the intervening years. King has rescued The Scotsman Hotel, the historic former home of the famous newspaper of the same name, on North Bridge, from liquidation, turning it into one of the city’s leading luxury venues, complete with its own in-house Picture House.
Through his Scotsman Group property company, he has invested heavily in pubs and hotels across the capital, spending a reported £30 million on The Three Sisters, in the Cowgate; The Bank Hotel, on the Royal Mile; Biddy Mulligan’s, in the Grassmarket; the Murrayfield Hotel; and others.
He has diversified outwith Edinburgh, converting the former Kilrymont High School in St Andrews into student accommodation, and the former BBC headquarters on Glasgow’s Queen Margaret Drive into his own corporate HQ.
Eleven years after buying the Odeon and announcing plans to turn it into “a world-class entertainment destination”, it remains his biggest uncompleted project.
