04/07/08
How do you solve a problem like the IMAX?
A PUBLIC auction, army camouflage tactics and an art attack – just some of the proposals to rid Bournemouth of the architectural Imax disaster.
The Waterfront building – which contains the disused cinema – has been voted Britain’s second most hated building for obscuring the sea view.
But Conservative Cllr Barry Goldbart has told Tales from the Town Hall about some of the “spurious” but “fun” suggestions of how to deal with the site – which he says has a 120-year lease costing around £9m to buy-out.
Some of the ideas include auctioning off the building brick by brick, covering it with paintings, or trying to make it invisible by placing a TV screen on one side and a camera on the other – the same method used to disguise some army tanks.
But Cllr Goldbart himself has jokingly suggested one of the most dramatic ideas.
“I was at a presentation meeting regarding the new Air Show that we’re putting on in August,” he said, “so I got up at that meeting and I said, ‘by the way, what do you think if I had a chat with the RAF when they were flying over the place, to see if they could do a bombing run on it’.”
But the leader of Bournemouth’s Labour group, Cllr Ben Grower, has thrown a spanner in the works.
“All we have is the rights over what goes into it, we can stop what it’s used for,” he said, “but we can’t knock it down, we can’t sell it, we can’t alter it, we don’t own it.”