EXCLUSIVE: Kentish Town Cinema Saga – lease just signed

With no commercial cinema chains interested in fitting and operating a single screen site these days, newsletter readers will know that here at Camdenist we’ve doggedly explored a number of community ownership models for the vacant space, having seen some great examples of such cinemas elsewhere.

But ultimately such ventures require passion-led financial support, not just enthusiastic dreams. Our overtures to Camden Council, community asset specialists and indeed the local community itself resulted in no hint of any realistic investment forthcoming. Therefore I think it’s safe to say that the folly of this whole protracted process was ultimately the attempt to fob off the vocal locals with a promise that nobody had any idea could ever actually be delivered.

While some locals might have been holding out for at least the return of, say, Pizza Express (although the high street isn’t exactly short on pizza joints), Drop Gym does sound like a decent addition to the area, and it will be unarguably nice to see this handsome corner operational for the first time since 2013(!)

“We set up the business based on my own journey,” Drop Gym co-founder Scott Hurst explained to me. “Years ago, I was coming out of a protracted and difficult business deal and had put on a lot of weight. I was feeling very insecure and had some terrible experiences going to normal gyms, discovering first-hand just how bad the personal training ecosystem was.

“Did you know it’s possible to take an online course and become a personal trainer in six weeks without ever touching a customer? That was shocking to me. But then I met Besjan Osmani—the one fitness professional who saw the industry in a different way. He believed health and fitness could be done right, that training should be about real education, real transformation, and not just a sales game. He was living proof that personal training could be better, and together, we set out to build something different.”

With existing branches nearby in places like West Hampstead and Kensal Rise, Drop Gym creates a safe workout space with a very limited capacity (in Kentish Town this will be a maximum of just 12 people at any one time) where you can choose to train with a PT or by yourself using the very latest equipment.

Women in particular seem to love the offer, which is the opposite of the traditional masculine training environment. “Our membership is 74% female,” says Scott. “The wasn’t by design, but I think women are able to feel safe in the spaces we create. A lot of people have anxiety around going to the gym, they feel self-conscious, which is exactly where I was at. There was no space catering to all these people even though doctors are telling us that muscle mass is super important to supporting our healthy longevity. So this is the environment we’ll now be bringing to Kentish Town.”

So, this is how the cinema dream ends – at least for now.

With five little Curzon screens in the railway arches just down the road, Kentishtowners essentially do have a cinema on their doorstep, while the old Polytechnic has what sounds like a viable and stable operator bringing it back to life, too.

We can all fantasise about how lovely it would be having little picture palaces in our high streets, but would enough of the doomscrolling-addled, Deliveroo-coddled masses get up off the sofa to fill 50 seats on a drizzly Tuesday evening to keep the lights on? Hmmmm.

Meanwhile, we’ll soon have some exciting news to bring to the area’s movie-loving masses, so this epic may yet have another plot twist, and even a happy ending…