1996/99
For up to date news visit the Connaught Telegraph website.
New six-screen cinema mooted for Castlebar
13 May 1998
By Deirdre Kelly
REVISED plans for a £3 million six-screen cinema complex opposite Dunnes Stores in Castlebar are to be submitted for planning approval within the next two weeks.
The 40,000 sq. ft. facility, with a capacity to seat 1,200 people, is being backed by Mr. Leo Ward of the Ward Anderson Group of film distributors and Castlebar businessman Mr Tony McHugh, head of Cavendish Lane Properties Limited.
Located on a site opposite the new Dunnes Stores car park, on the old cemetery side of the road, the complex will be one of the most elaborate in the country, and is triple the investment of a rival company's plans for a similar facility at the Roller Bowl complex in Castlebar.
The new improved plans were designed after An Bord Pleanala rejected previous proposals for a £2.3 million facility on a nearby site. This application was turned down as the planning authority deemed it to constitute a large industrial type building and posed a threat to trees in the adjoining cemetery.
According to Mr. Ward the complex is even more elaborate than the group's newest facility in Athlone which will be officially opened on tomorrow (Thursday).
Plans for the development at Knockroghery, Castlebar, will be with planning officers in the next two weeks, he said, and he hoped to have planning permission "very quickly" with a view to starting work straight away.
Up to the same high standard as the Omniplex in Galway City, and similar to the Savoy in Dublin, Mr. Ward said the Castlebar facility would bring state-of-the-art cinema to Mayo.
He had not been put off by An Bord Pleanala's decision to grant permission to Barcastle Industries Limited for a £1m. multiplex facility on the grounds of the old Bacon Factory site.
"It will make us more determined to get ahead and start it," he said.
Mr. Ward said he considered the new site better than the old proposed site and did not envisage any problems in this regard.
The extensive car parking in the area was an added bonus and he hoped to see the area become a central focus of the town.
The facility would also create 35 jobs between full and part-time staff.
Mr. Ward continued: "The cinema will be something County Mayo have not experience in the past and it will be as good as any Dublin cinema.
"Unless the facility was top class we could not afford to go on with it. With opposition there we have to make sure our complex is first class."
