Save the Coliseum

Some time ago on the blog we featured the news that the beloved and iconic cinema building in our local town Porthmadog (the Coliseum) was being sold, and that a band of local volunteers were on a mission to save it from developers and transform the sadly crumbling building to its former glory (read the original blog post here).

The Coliseum, the iconic Porthmadog cinema was built in the 1930’s to a traditional art-deco style. The distinctive cinema building has been the centre of social occasions, town events, childhood memories, teenage dreams and even film premiers for over eight happy decades, and it has fond memories for many local people.

Sadly, the Porthmadog cinema closed in 2011, due to a sharp fall in the number of visitors. Despite several campaigns by the Friends of the Coliseum to save and re-open the iconic building as a focal community point and centre for art, film and music, the cinema has remained closed.

Although the Porthmadog cinema is now in a bad state of repair, the building and the site were bought by a developer, who has since submitted an application to Gwynedd Council to demolish the troubled building and replace it with a more commercially viable structure, although the architects working for the developers advise that they don’t know the nature of the new building yet.

The Coliseum is not a listed building so the application for demolition was presented last week. The campaign group to save the coliseum have created an e-mail template so that anyone wishing to send their objections to the council can do so via e-mail.

The group are still hoping for a last minute reprieve for this beautiful and iconic building. You can find out more details about the application at this link here and more information about the Friends of the Coliseum group on their Facebook page.