Following Bruce
Bird's comments (Letters, December 11), in 1986 I was a projectionist at the Worthing Odeon.
The site was, I believe, on a 99-year lease from the freeholder, who I was told at the time was Girton College, Oxford.
The Avon Group bought the freehold and then offered Rank a fee to terminate the lease.
Crighton Miller, Rank's managing director, visited the site and, seeing only the short-term profit, promptly disposed of the site on his last day with Rank Theatres.
The new managing director, Mr A O'Farrell, was livid when he found out.
He visited the site and said this was the first purpose-built Odeon and should be preserved.
Rank had a surveyor look at the building who said the structure was in very good order for its age and needed only cosmetic repair.
However, this counted for nothing as Avon by then owned the building and Rank could do nothing to save it.
As to the supposedly dangerous state of the building, I remember having a confrontation with some youths who had got on to the flat roof over the foyer and were throwing brick rubble on to the road at passing cars and pedestrians.
The rubble had been left after building work. Could this have been the excuse for saying the building was dangerous?
In the event, the place was so well built it took some days to remove the wonderful tiles that faced the walls.
-Alan Jones, Cranworth Road, Worthing
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