A "number of options" are being considered for the future of Liverpool's famous ABC Cinema, the council has said, three years after it gave the green light to plans to turn it into a performance venue.
According to Liverpool Council, the site is crucial to its Upper Central masterplan - a scheme covering huge swathes of the city centre, as BusinessLive reports.
In 2016, planning permission was approved for the state-of-the-art music and entertainment venue to host live performances inside the famous auditorium, holding up to 1,500 people.
At the time, it was transferred to developer Neptune - now Ion Development - on a 250-year lease for a nominal £1 fee.
It was reported that the scheme hoped to turn the 1931 venue, which has been closed and decaying for 20 years, into a venue of “international standing”, complete with a TV studio overlooking Lime Street.
But the last public update to the ABC plans was back in March last year.
Inside the old ABC Cinema:
Speaking at international property festival Mipim in Cannes, Steve Parry, managing director of Ion, said his firm was still moving the £11m project forward behind the scenes, and that it was finalising the funding package.
He told the Liverpool Echo at the time: "It'll take months rather than any longer" - but since then, there doesn't appear to have been much progress on the scheme.
Last week, the ECHO contacted the council to ask for the very latest on the plans, and the authority told us that plans for the ABC Cinema are included within the Upper Central district.
The ECHO reported in July that Upper Central will cover 56 acres of the city centre, running from Liverpool Central Station to Liverpool Science Park and Lime Street to Bold Street.
The newly-branded area is seen as crucial to the city's blossoming Knowledge Quarter - and could create 7,000 new jobs.
Those proposals were included in the council's Spatial Regeneration Framework, which went out to consultation in July, before closing in September.
A spokesman added: "The city council is currently looking at a number of options to make best use of the ABC cinema as it forms a key part of the new Upper Central masterplan, which runs from Lime Street to Brownlow Hill into the city’s Knowledge Quarter."
Ion referred the ECHO's enquiry to the council.
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