Eros cinema being renovated, not pulled down, clarify officials

Eros cinema, one of Mumbai’s first single screens and an integral part of both the city’s Bollywood history and its Art Deco buildings, will soon be seen in a new avatar. On Saturday, rumours flew thick and fast on social media that it was being pulled down but officials associated with the development have strongly refuted these and clarified that the theatre is undergoing a makeover.

Eros, which is located in the Grade II-A heritage building, ‘Cambata’, on the junction of Maharshi Karve Road and Jamshetji Tata Road at Churchgate, shut down in 2017 because of poor ticket sales. The Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee (MHCC) cleared a proposal by the owners to turn the theatre’s lobby and stall section into a department store and the balcony into a 300-seat theatre.

The plans were sanctioned in 2018, but a senior official from Metro Realty, which is carrying out the redevelopment, said that the Covid pandemic had delayed the plans. “We have begun with the conservation of the building,” he said. “Many leakages have to be plugged and the foliage that is growing out of the walls has to be removed. It will take at least a year and thereafter we will start with the interior work.”

Metro Realty officials had told the MHCC earlier that the structure had deteriorated considerably in the past 80 years, and it would be a challenge to restore it to its past glory. The proposal currently before the MHCC seeks a change of user and alterations within the part of the building that houses the cinema hall. It promises that the art-deco elements in the theatre’s lobby and the atrium will be retained and rejuvenated.

Cambata building has several other tenants, including a bank and a coffee shop, and the theatre is surrounded by commercial establishments on all sides. After the redevelopment, the current entrance to Eros will become the entrance to the departmental store while the access to the new theatre will be from the eastern façade of the building.

The cinema house, with a capacity to seat 1,204 people, opened in 1938. The minutes of the MHCC meeting held on September 11, 2018, say that the overall health of the structure has suffered due to paucity of funds. The minutes also state that the makeover proposal was initiated to make the cinema house financially sustainable and also to rejuvenate the health of the entire structure.

Among the works proposed are structural repairs to the beams/RCC slabs internally and repairs/renovation of the cinema roof. Although changes are limited to the cinema portion without external changes, repairs to the chhajjas and parapet walls of the entire building, which are in poor condition, have also been proposed.