The winning alternative design will be put to London and Regional Properties and Stratford District Council.

Stratford Picturehouse, the town’s two-screen cinema which opened in 1997 after a public campaign involving a 2,000-signature petition, is in grave danger of shutting down if the new cinema is built.

On Tuesday night, its general manager, Carina Volkes, told Stratford Town Council’s planning advisory committee that if the new cinema was built, it would kill the Picturehouse, and rather than two cinemas could ultimately leave the town with none.

“We have two screens and we struggle to fill those,” she said.  “I am worried that this town will have a great big five-screen cinema that fails, and then they won’t have a two-screen cinema to fall back on. We want to invest £120,000 improving the seating, but we can’t justify it if it does go ahead, because we can’t afford it.”

Ms Volkes does not think a larger cinema is economically sustainable in a town the size of Stratford. “The general rule-of-thumb is one screen to every 13,500 people,” she said.

In 1997, after Mr Kol-odotschko bought the site, the Picturehouse was built using a mixture of National Lottery money, donations, and a grant from the district council. Ms Volkes said that if it closed then the public money used to originally fund it would be effectively wasted.

After hearing comments from other members of the public, the committee voted five to one to object to the London and Regional’s application. The plan, which includes restaurants and shops as well as the cinema, will now be decided by the district council’s west area planning committee on 8th February.

In the past, London and Regional’s UK development director Geoff Springer has categorically stated that with-out a cinema there will be no development, a stance that has been described by outraged opponents as “blackmail.”

It is unknown how Mr Kolodotschko, a former architect, plans to get around Mr Springer’s policy. He is currently recovering from illness in the West Indies for two weeks, and so was un-available for comment. His offer was made public by Picturehouse campaigner and former mayor Cyril Bennis at Tuesday night’s meeting.

But any alternative plan will face a major obstacle: London and Regional has a 175-year lease on the site and claim to have four companies interested in taking over the cinema once completed.

The Mayor of Stratford, Cllr Bill Dowling, has been against the cinema since it was first proposed, and he intends to present the competition offer from Mr Kolodotschko to the district council at the meeting of its west area planning committee on 8th February which is due to consider the

London and Regional application. He says that he will reiterate his call for a decision to be postponed for further consultation.
He told the committee that London and Regional was a selfish company that would keep trying to get what it wanted, regardless of what the townspeople wanted.

Neil Pearce, the town council’s planning adviser, said although the economic sustainability of the new cinema could be taken into consideration, it is often difficult to prove because a lot of it is supposition.
And regarding the impact it would have on the Picturehouse, he said that the new cinema could not be refused based on “unfair opposition.”

He also told councillors that after being criticised for the bulk of the proposed new cinema, London and Reg-ional had amended the plans and reduced the height of the south side of the building by around five metres. He said: “They have made an effort where they can to reduce the site. I think, to be fair, there is a minimum requirement of height because it is a cinema.”

But the mayor stood firm in his opposition. He proposed the town council, in its formal objection to the scheme should say: “The cinema is not necessary and would be detrimental to the currently under-used cinema in the town. There is a danger that this use is simply not viable in a town of this size and would result in a development faced with certain closure if and when it is opened.”