The Bradford businessman behind plans to restore the city’s former Odeon cinema into a 3,500-seat live music venue today spoke of his desire to transform the long-empty building and “do something” for his hometown.

Lee Craven, a director of family textile firm Jessgrove, based in Great Horton, was revealed as the man behind the Bradford Live restoration plans last week.

He has spent two years trying to find a modern, viable use for the building, and today unveiled full details of the proposed scheme.

Bradford Live estimates that the restoration of the building will cost between £15 million to £19m.

It believes the venue could host live events up to 200 times a year.   

Mr Craven has reiterated that the restoration of the Odeon was not a business proposition for him, and it was not his intention to earn money from the project, just to bring about a transformation of the building.

“My motivation is twofold really,” he said. “I’m interested in the building itself, the architecture and history of it, and the sheer scale of the original auditorium, which was, and hopefully will be again, a hugely impressive space.

“And the second reason is because I wanted to do something for Bradford, or at least try to. It is my hometown and I got fed up with all the negativity. I do think Bradford can have a good future, if it acts boldly, as it used to do.

“City Park shows that when the city does act boldly it can succeed.

“With the former Odeon building, Bradford has a chance to rework a key part of its heritage into a bigger venue that the modern music industry increasingly demands. It is a unique opportunity.”

At a launch event today, the project team spoke about how there were no mid-sized venues in the area and that Bradford was an ideal location to fill a gap in the market.


It also emerged that they were in discussion with major international operators about running a live venue from the Odeon, who would guarantee an income stream, allowing funds to be raised to pay for the restoration costs.


Questions were also asked about the timescale of such a project, which is expected to be around three years - a year to 18 months to finalise the design and to get the consents, and around an 18 month to two year period for the conversion.


It was also made clear that while they would prefer for Bradford Council to own the building, they would not be expecting the authority to provide any significant grant funding of their own.

Mr Craven has put together a team including the country's leading experts in auditorium renovation and restoration, and in the financing and management of live performance venues. They include Peter Angier, an expert in the planning and design of theatre auditoriums, and Nick Russell, a live venue planning and funding specialist who worked on the current Leeds Arena scheme.

Tim Ronalds, the architect behind the Hackney Empire restoration project in London, is also part of the team.

They hope to use a public-private financing model, similar to that used in the creation of the Leeds Arena and the refurbishment of the Barbican in York.

Mr Craven became interested in the Odeon after taking on an earlier Bradford cinema restoration project – The Plaza at Cross Lane – which is now home to the Joshua Project.

The building is very close to his textile firm and he bought it as it controlled access to the site.

“We started to poke around and realised that much of the original 1914 cinema architecture – including the original vaulted roof – was still there,” he said. “We decided to restore the core of the building.”

The opportunity to save the 1930s Odeon building comes after the Homes and Communities Agency, which owns it, terminated a long-standing legal agreement in September with developer Langtree, which had wanted to demolish the building and build a £40 million New Victoria Place development of offices, a hotel and apartments.

Bradford Council is considering an offer from the HCA to take the building on for £1 plus £100,000 of maintenance cash.