Will a new cinema mean a new future?

Which precisely IS?

Well, he is right but not in the way he means.

We should look at the overall package Arun and the blessed St M want to foist on us. The current Hothamton site covered in a new supermarket and flats (surprise etc).

Let’s ask just which supermarket chain is all lined up to pop along and do us the favour?

Rumours are out that it’s... Tesco. Who says?

Well-placed people in Arun perhaps.

Do tell. If yes, then what happens to the Shripney Road Tesco – and then we have all those little Tescos in, er, Station Road, Felpham. Aldwick Road, now applied for in North Bersted.

I do hear we may a scheme to rename the town Tesco Regis.

One naughty little sparrow tells me that it’s accepted the plan is to force Morrisons out, just as they are looking to invest in their site. Hmmm? Denials are needed.

What of Morrisons indeed? In the same edition of your paper we read ‘Store plans to be the subject of talks with retailer’.

Not regarded, it seems, as part of ‘regeneration’ (maybe they should offer an eight-screen multiplex in the multi-storey car park to top St Modwen’s crowning glory?).

So given 3 years to build it, they want an extension – after all St Modwen gets them. And Arun wants them to surrender their lease so they can get a new one... Ah, those with memories, like myself, KNOW you DON’t surrender leases just like that.

I just dusted out of my attic copy of legal counsel obtained for Arun Arts, who run the theatre, which advises them Arun has zilch prospect of a compulsory purchase order to proceed its plans.

So no need to suck up to Arun’s plans for the multiplex and if anyone at the theatre tries it, they will find themselves legally challenged to ensure they do not give away the charity’s main asset, which is that lease, for anything less favourable.

No good getting an extension from 370 to 500 seats if you get a lease which expires in, say, 2029 instead of the current 2046.

So, we have a secure theatre, provided it’s run properly, we have a cinema which caters for local need and which can be expanded to 4 screens within its present curtilege.

What will we get for sure from St Modwen’s?

A five-screen mutiplex offering the same films at much higher prices. Another 125 seats at the theatre. Tesco relocated from Shripney Road (plus mini-Tescos everywhere). Ooh, Morrisons moving out? Flats on Hothamton.

Maybe a shortened theatre lease. Oh, forgot Whitbreads get their budget hotel for which they have stayed on site at The Regis since 1996. They know the virtue of patience...

I recall from my days as leader of the Labour group at Arun, at which time the regeneration tender was put out, that three companies, including St Modwen’s, put in for it.

The scoring was in three areas, including company profile and also financial sustainability. Now St Modwen won in the other two (not by much) but on the financial sustainability, we were advised St Modwen’s was the weakest.

I suggest this limp package from St Modwen’s is proof of that analysis which I have always felt was given far far too little consideration by Mr McMann and Co.

What does it offer that will make people come to Bognor, spend their money and stay longer? Nothing.

Nothing to make people decide to come here rather than elsewhere. Even from Aldwick-near-Chichester and Felpham, West Sussex. Our main industry, people’s holiday leisure, given a seafront ‘budget hotel’. Bourne doing their bit, but still no reason to come into town. For a multiplex cinema? Ludicrous.

Cater for the family, in season, so, as I’ve said before, do it well. Make people feel that this town not only has the best weather but attractions worth coming here for because no one else is doing them.

In a ‘fragile economy’ this is no time to commit to duff permanent features whose power to regenerate is zero.

Jan Cosgrove

Former town mayor