KEN LEE, Town Hall reporter, on how Croydon’s failed Mayor has been blindsided, again, by another major loss to the High Street
Blank screens: the Vue multiplex has operated 10 screens in the town centre since 2000
The latest hammerblow to Jason Perry’s bogus election claims that he has Croydon “back on track” and that “the Town Centre is coming back” arrived in voters’ inboxes yesterday, with the announcement that the Vue cinema in Grants, close to the Town Hall on Croydon High Street, is to close next week.
The 10-screen multiplex, with cinemas ranging in size from 88 to 396 seats, has been a feature of the entertainment centre since it opened in 2000.
Vue is behind the listed frontage of Croydon’s “other” department store, Grant’s, or what was once known as “the Harrod’s of south London”. The store closed in 1985, but the entertainment centre that eventually replaced it, after several years of the building standing vacant, helped to retain a vestige of town centre amenity, even after Allders closed and Westfield laid waste to the rest of the town centre with their development blight.
In the past, the 160,840sqft building has also had a Wetherspoons pub and Turtle Bay Caribbean restaurant. From April 9, all that will remain is a Nando’s, the Tokia Square Asian foodhall and a Nuffield Health gym.
The building was bought for £33million in 2015 – at the height of the Westfield hype about Croydon’s multi-billion regeneration – by Hermes Property Investment Management.
Hammerblow: Vue are closing their town centre multiplex one month before the local elections
But the building’s ownership changed hands this January, when MGI Holdings bought the property for an undisclosed sum. Inevitably, the Mayfair-based property firm says it will “reinvigorate its offering and reinforce Croydon’s position as one of London’s most dynamic suburban centres”. Like we haven’t heard guff like that all before.
Whatever MGI may have planned, it looks like a multiple run by Vue won’t be part of it.
In an email to regular customers sent yesterday, Vue wrote: “We’re sad to say that our Croydon Grants venue will soon be closing on Thursday 9th April.”
Putting a positive spin on things, the email continued: “But never fear, your next nearest Vue is just around the corner!” In fact, Vue’s Purley Way cinemas are 2½ miles away – so a decent stroll on an evening out.
Vue Purley Way, apparently, features the cinema chain’s “biggest, confiest and most luxurious seats ever”.
Which is all well and good, but the news is the latest pre-election blow for the hopes of hapless Jason Perry, with the closure exactly one month before polling day.
Given that Mayor Perry is a director of the Croydon Business “Improvement” District, he probably ought to have been on the front foot over Vue’s plans. The council has been silent over the significant closure, with the loss of jobs and the inevitable decline in customer footfall to the town centre as a consequence.
Tory Perry’s election propaganda has included claims that the town centre is on its way back, after Westfield opened six kiosks in the old Allders building. In 2025, five times as many businesses quit the Westfield-managed Whitgift Centre than new kiosks opened.
Happy punter: Jason Perry claims credit for six kiosks. But everywhere else, businesses are closing
And now the town centre’s multiplex cinema is shutting up shop on Perry’s watch, too.
This serious set-back follows Perry getting ridiculed by the High Court and having his money-spinning low traffic neighbourhoods shut down, while also overseeing a collapsed £22million property deal at Red Clover Gardens in Coulsdon. Meanwhile, there has been no significant progress since 2022 with Westfield’s “regeneration” of the town centre and Purley Pool, which Perry promised to re-open four years ago, remains closed and empty.
Mayor Perry and Croydon Council were invited to comment on the Vue closure. They had not responded by the time of publication.
The local MP, Sarah Jones, together with Labour’s mayoral candidate Rowenna Davis, have written to Vue and the building’s new owners.
“Croydon residents have been devastated to hear that Vue Cinemas are leaving Grants in our town centre,” Davis says in the letter.
“Your cinema has been a real centre for fun, community and memories in our town.”
Davis and Jones have requested an urgent meeting “to better understand your decision and see if there is any way in which we could support you to review it”.
But such belated intervention is unlikely to be enough to persuade the cinema operators to reconsider their decision to close.
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