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By Paula Planelles Manzanaro Property Correspondent
Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) has sold off the Leicester Square Odeon, one of the most famous. The acting receiver for the Odeon Leicester Square, Allsop confirmed the sale of the cinema and the surrounding buildings, including a disused office and a pub, to the Radisson Edwardian hotel group. The sale is thought to have an estimated value of £100m. The largest single-screen in the UK at the Odeon Leicester Square now earmarked for disposal will mean London will lose one of the most important cinemas in the country, often used for screening film premieres.
Peter Burns of CBRE underlined the importance of the development project, at the Leicester Square site, which has planning permission for the building of a two-screen cinema, a 245-bedroom hotel, 33 apartments and a restaurant after Odeon’s demolition.
“Sites like these don’t come around more than every 10 years or so and it is a really exciting opportunity for building a valuable project in the heart of London”, he told The Financial Times.
The sale of the Odeon Leicester Square is an example of the redesign of Leicester Square and how the iconic square is being transformed into a tourist hub. Nama asked Anglo Irish Bank for a loan of £28m to buy the Odeon Leicester Square in 2006. Two years later, they planned the construction of a new hotel, two cinemas and an apartment on the Odeon site in a project that cost £200m at the time.
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