Catford Mews, the only cinema in the borough of Lewisham, has suddenly closed as the building has been repossessed by its landlord.
The three-screen cinema and community hub opened four years ago in a former Poundland store in Catford shopping centre. It also housed independent food outlets and a bar and had been hosting half-term events this week.
However, Lewisham Council announced on Tuesday that its operator, Really Local Group, had run up “significant arrears”. It said that Catford Regeneration Partnership Limited (CPRL), a council-owned company, had taken the building back.
“CRPL and the Council acknowledge the value Catford Mews has brought to the area, which is why CRPL worked for several years to support the operators and had given them multiple opportunities to secure their future in Catford,” the statement said.
“However, CRPL cannot continue to carry this level of financial burden supporting a commercial tenant.”
Last week Lewisham Council’s cabinet was told that CRPL was owed £1.3 million by tenants in the Catford Centre, which it hopes to eventually redevelop. CPRL was said to be about £17m in debt to the council, which is its only shareholder.
Really Local Group has not yet responded to a request for comment from The Greenwich Wire, but a message appeared on Catford Mews’s Facebook page on Tuesday evening, saying it was “surprised and saddened” by the council’s announcement, and claiming that it had agreed the terms of a 10-year deal to stay at the Catford Centre in May.
“This deal included arrears incurred during Covid and exacerbated by the post-pandemic issues in the cinema industry which have seen only one month in the past five years approach pre-Covid levels,” the Facebook statement said.
“Since then [May], the council has delayed completing this agreed deal by throwing increasingly impossible terms our way, concluding with a demand for an impossibly large upfront payment at end of September. From this date onwards, no one from the council would respond to our calls/emails seeking a resolution.
“All across the country, councils are working with their cinemas to ensure a bright future. It’s a great shame Lewisham Council has decided to take this destructive path and force an integral community hub to close.”
Appealing for support from locals, the statement added: “Catford Mews has never just been a commercial venture. It was designed to be a place for local residents to make their own, whether that be to join a creative workshop, catch a film, watch comedy or simply hang out with friends.”
The cinema also said that tickets would be automatically refunded. A petition has been launched to ask Lewisham to reconsider.
Catford Mews was Really Local Group’s first site, being run as a temporary location while the building awaited redevelopment. Lewisham ultimately wants 2,700 new homes to be built in the area, with the shopping centre and the Milford Towers estate demolished and new shops and towers built in their place, according to the town centre masterplan.
Bringing in hospitality businesses – and selling Catford merchandise – was part of the plan to improve the area’s image in the meantime.
Really Local later went on to team up with Bexley Council to open the Sidcup Storyteller alongside a new library on the high street. Across the Thames, it is also due to open a cinema in a new development in Canning Town.
Lewisham Council said it would be supporting Catford Mews staff and the independent businesses caught up in the closure, while CPRL was “proactively looking for a tenant to take over the space and bring the community benefits local people will be keen to see”.
When the last cinema in Catford, the ABC, closed in 2001, there was no cinema in the borough of Lewisham until 2016, when a Curzon opened at Goldsmiths University in New Cross. That closed during the pandemic.
A cinema was due to be part of the Lewisham Gateway development by Lewisham station, but the proposed operator, Empire, went bust last year. The developer behind Lewisham Gateway, Muse, has not responded to a question about the future of the proposed cinema.
Between Catford and Lewisham town centres, the council has also hoped to have a cinema in the long-delayed Ladywell Playtower project, which has stalled amid rising costs.
Updated at 9.40pm with the Catford Mews Facebook statement and some more on the redevelopment plans for the area, and at 10.15pm to include the petition. Updated again at 4.30pm on Wednesday to include a link to an up-to-date story and again on Friday at 12.50am to update that link.
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