Odeon Kingswest (1973 to date)

King's Road/West Street, Brighton 25
operated 1973 to date

1973 April 18  Three-screen cinema, replacing the three screens of Odeon West Street and the nearby Academy Cinema and Regent Cinema, opened in the space of the former ice-rink as part of the Kingswest leisure complex, meant to link into the Churchill Square shopping area and originally designed by Russell Diplock Associates, which opened 10 November 1965 as the Top Rank Suite and renamed Kingswest in 1972. Seats: 390 in Odeon 1, 885 in Odeon 2 and 504 in Odeon 3, the three auditoria served by a single projection booth.
1987 May Fourth and fifth screens added for the first Brighton Film Festival.
1989 August Sixth screen added; 103 seats, bringing total seating to 2,397. 
1999 May 19 Rank Organisation announces plans to replace the building with a new 10-screen 2,550-seat multiplex 'within three years'. The site would also house three restaurants, including a Hard Rock Cafe. 
1999 October Planning application for the multiplex rebuild is submitted.

This was said to be the most profitable cinema site in the Odeon chain and reportedly the only one that never made a loss. 
        However, the Kingswest complex has been reviled as one of the most ghastly mistakes made by the nexus of planners and local Conservative 'business interests' on the council that managed to wreak such havoc on the town, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. 'Delegates [to the 16th Congress of the ... Union Internationale des Architectes] cannot fail to notice the Brighton Centre, the Top Rank building—now called King's West [sic]—and other lumps that disfigure the central sea-front,' wrote Private Eye (10 July 1987).

Small efforts have been made to mask the drabness but to little avail and sorting out the internal layout would probably require a fresh start.

Photos: Terra Media

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