City of Sydney Council baulks at spending $20m on Metro Theatre in Kings Cross

It was put on sale in October after the company decided to move its facilities to Fox Studios, but Liberal councillor Christine Forster put a motion to the council on Monday night to buy the site instead. She said it would be perfect as a town hall, similar to those in Glebe and Balmain, and could be used for film festivals, as a theatre, arts venue, function centre, bike hub, local museum and for exhibitions and meetings.

“The Metro represents a huge opportunity for the local community as it has so much heritage value and is so important to the area,” she said. “There’s a precedent too for something like this, when we spent $15 million on buying the Tabernacle in Darlinghurst and converted it into the Eternity Playhouse.

“It would be terrific to put it into public hands for community use.”

Although Councillor Forster received a number of letters of support from local residents as well as arts and cultural groups, and the agent for the property JLL Sydney said they’d welcome an approach, the motion was voted down at the council meeting.

George Miller inside the Metro theatre in 2003. Photo: Peter Morris

Councillor Jess Scully said the council should instead be supporting the work the state government was doing to develop  infrastructure strategies to address Sydney’s future cultural needs. She said it would be better that the building was purchased by a commercial operator.

At the same time, she moved an amendment that the council’s chief executive “consider whether the City could assist with any viable proposal” for the operations of the Metro as a cultural facility.

The building is well known in Sydney as the production offices for more than 25 movies and TV series from the Kennedy Miller Mitchell organisation, with Oscar-winning director George Miller, its co-founder, a regular visitor to the neighbourhood.

The work at the Metro on Orwell Street, which started life as a live entertainment complex called the Minerva before being bought in 1948 by Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer (MGM) and converted into a cinema in 1952, and then becoming the film studio in 1982, has generated 18 Academy Award nominations, and eight Oscars.

Andrew Woodhouse, the president of the Potts Point and Kings Cross Heritage and Residents’ Society, said the council purchase of the site would add to the cultural renaissance of the area. “It would make a great community cultural centre for a film festival and plays and community meeting hall,” he said.

The chairperson of the Hayes Theatre Company Lisa Campbell, which was looking to expand its own nearby site to accommodate 200 patrons, also supported the proposal.

“The addition of a medium-sized theatre space to the cultural landscape of Sydney, it would be of great benefit for producers, performers and audiences alike, creating more opportunities for the presentation of commercial productions as well as improving the local economy through an increase in visitors to the area,” she said.

The agent, JLL Sydney national director, sales and investments NSW James Aroney, said he was in “advanced negotiations” for the sale of the theatre and was “not able to comment on this at this point of time”.

Councillor Forster said she was disappointed that Sydneysiders would not have the chance to own an important part of the city’s artistic history, especially when the council had $636 million in the bank.

“It was well within our financial means to buy it,” she said. “But essentially the Lord Mayor and her party have voted to sit idly by while the building is sold. Yet another ‘do nothing’ motion which is a complete sell-out of the local community.”