KEY POINTS:
An art house cinema operator has pulled out of negotiations to take over Devonport's Victoria Theatre after the Historic Places Trust turned down its alterations plan.
The trust said it would challenge the resource consent bid to create four cinemas in the 1912 building because it did not meet requirements for a building awarded the highest heritage protection in the land.
Lighthouse Cinema started negotiations as preferred tenderer last year with the owner, the North Shore City Council.
A March council report, withheld from the public until yesterday, says that in November the company presented an amended alteration plan which took into account restraints on what it could do since the Category One status was awarded.
The company also gave the council two choices - sell it the building at a "nominal value" reflecting the heritage constraints, or pay for seismic strengthening and some of the cinema fit-out costs, as protection of heritage elements would constrain the commercial viability of the original tender.
The council, which paid $1.55 million for the building in March 2006 prompted by concern that it would be bulldozed, wanted to talk further with Lighthouse and the trust to see how a financially viable theatre could be worked out.
But Lighthouse director Simon Werry said yesterday the Victoria was in the "too hard basket".
The company had converted Category Two buildings in Wellington into cinemas and had been excited about redeveloping the disused Victoria into a four-screen art house cinema complex.
"But this Category One created obstacles that were insurmountable.
"It would have taken the theatre to how it was, a single-screen cinema.
"The building needed significant seismic strengthening work and Category One does not say how you can do it without affecting the protected interior."
The council chose Lighthouse because it believed it could operate without needing continuing council financial support.
The company's withdrawal now opens the door for a fresh tender bid by a spurned bidder, the Victoria Theatre Trust. It prompted the campaign to save the Victoria and applied for the Category One protection status.
"We will revive the huge plan we had two years ago for a multi purpose theatre and performing arts and cinema venue for the community," said trust chairman Sarah Burren.
"People are dying to get the place used again - it's being used for band practice - and return it to its former glory."
The council did not get the building's warrant of fitness for public use renewed because of the cost of meeting health and safety standards. It refused to spend the estimated $1 million to $1.5 million needed for upgrading the building and seismic strengthening.
The theatre was built in 1912. Alterations in 1929 gave the building its distinctive art deco facade.
