The Zlín City Hall will announce a competition next year for the renovation of the Grand Cinema

Zlín - The City Hall of Zlín will announce an architectural competition next year for the reconstruction of the Great Cinema, which has been closed since last March due to structural issues. Zdeněk Dvořák, the spokesperson for the City Hall, announced this today to ČTK. The building was constructed during the Baťa era, and the cinema hall with more than a thousand seats is the largest in the country.

Recently, heritage conservationists, architects, city representatives, and the last operator of the building discussed the future of the cinema. According to them, the building could be used for the needs of the city, film festivals, concerts, various performances, social or sports events, but its main function should remain film screenings.

"The Great Cinema should be, after reconstruction, a facility that, while preserving the values of a cultural monument, offers maximum utility. In this context, there is consideration of how to place the necessary facilities in the building, as well as a stage with a variable size, an orchestra pit, or a structure for temporary leveling of part of the auditorium. This will, of course, be a challenging task. At the same time, the debate at the level of heritage care has reached a new dimension in that the subject of heritage protection may not only be the original form from 1933 but also some later modifications," said architect Ivo Tuček from the spatial planning department of the City Hall. The usage of the cinema will be discussed again in December.

The cinema has been fenced off for a long time. "It is in even worse condition than we expected. There are numerous faults, such as overloaded load-bearing steel structures, inappropriate interventions made over time, or poorly and unprofessionally executed welds," said Leopold Bednařík from the department of investment project implementation of the City Hall.

The Great Cinema was built in 1932 by the Baťa company according to a design attributed to architect František L. Gahura. The original capacity of the auditorium reached up to 2270 seats, which has gradually been reduced to the current 1010 seats.