A huge entertainment venue hosting West End shows, music concerts and opera could be built on a town centre car park, KentOnline can reveal.

Ambitious plans to transform Ashford’s Vicarage Lane car park and former Mecca Bingo hall have been drawn up by multi-millionaire Paul Gregg.

The 82-year-old - a former director of Everton Football Club - believes the 3,000-capacity venue will transform the town’s nightlife and wants English National Opera (ENO) to move into the facility.

The London-based company is searching for a new home after being told it must move outside the capital if it wants to qualify for future government grants.

Mr Gregg hopes to submit a planning application to the borough council in the coming months, with a view to opening the ‘Ashford LIVE’ facility before Christmas or early next year.

As part of the scheme, the rear of the former Mecca Bingo - originally an Odeon cinema - would be flattened, but the ornate former entrance facing the Lower High Street would be retained.

Mr Gregg says he would “restore the frontage to its former glory”, creating a walk-through from the high street to his ‘Ashford LIVE’ venue, which would be built on the 185-space car park.

For the last year, site owner Ashford Borough Council (ABC) has been looking for an operator to take on the hall and “put their own unique stamp” on the building.

The authority had previously wanted to build a public square and 230 homes on the car park, but dropped that part of the scheme last February.

This week, ABC confirmed it has been in contact with Mr Gregg about his proposal, but said no deals have been signed and it has only held “initial discussions”.

If built, the planned structure would have a seated capacity of 1,600, but its raked seating could be removed to create a flat-floor venue with space for 3,000, allowing for concerts, conferences and exhibitions.

Mr Gregg, who has been working on the plan for a year, says his project “would make the town centre a true destination”.

“The venue would have the ability to stage any major West End show - it would be a multi-purpose asset for the town,” he said.

“It could totally regenerate the town centre and give it a night economy that it doesn’t have at the moment.

“Our ambition is to make the town centre a more exciting destination, and put a thousand people a night into the town for entertainment who aren’t going there now.”

Mr Gregg says he is hoping to gain investment from both ABC and Kent County Council as the project would cost “in the region of £9 million”.

He has met with both authorities as well as Stuart Murphy, chief executive of ENO, who is currently considering a number of different sites.

“I believe Ashford would offer a great home for ENO as it is close to London city centre,” Mr Gregg said.

“Levelling up isn’t just about the north of England - Kent is a levelling up area as well - and having ENO based there would be a huge asset.

“With the plans to get Eurostar stopping in Ashford again eventually, you would then have easy access to Paris and Brussels for ENO.

“It could be a huge international base for the company.

“It could be its new home, with its productions still playing at the London Coliseum, with occasional visits to Manchester and elsewhere.”

Mr Gregg says the tent-like structure - the design of which has previously won a ‘best development’ award in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - would be “very easy to build”.

He has carried out a review of Ashford’s car parks and says there would be “adequate” capacity if the Vicarage Lane facility is built on.

“The car park is convenient for the high street, but there are others with equally convenient spaces,” he said.

When ABC previously had plans to build on the site, it wanted to offset the lost spaces by building a multi-storey facility on Station Road car park behind Hollywood Bowl.

But despite waving the plans through in March 2019, the 500-space project stalled during the pandemic and is no longer being considered.

When asked for a statement on Mr Gregg’s project, a council spokesman said the scheme is in the early stages.

“Ashford Borough Council has been approached about what appears to be an exciting proposal, however we have only held initial discussions with the people behind this idea,” he said.

“We look forward to hearing more details on these plans as they emerge, and we are pleased that the private sector once again sees the merits of Ashford’s location and are looking at potentially investing here.

"As more details on these proposals emerge, they will be subject to public consultation, member approvals and planning consent, so there is some way to go on this idea but it is pleasing to think something like this could come to Ashford.”

The entrepreneur behind the plan

Scarborough-born Paul Gregg built Apollo Leisure Group into the UK’s biggest theatre group and the country’s largest independent cinema chain, which he eventually sold to SFX Group in 1999 for £158 million in 1999.

Until 2004, when he sold his shares, Mr Gregg was a major shareholder in Everton Football Club.

His early career was in ABC Cinema followed by managing a social club at Cowley at the huge British Leyland site in Oxfordshire.

Moving north to Southport in Merseyside, Mr Gregg became the director of tourism and attractions in the seaside town.

In 1977, aged 36, he purchased the Ardwick Theatre in Manchester, soon followed by the New Theatre in Oxford.

Mr Gregg built his Apollo Leisure business by taking over struggling venues and turning them around.

He reopened the Lyceum in London in the 1990s at a cost of £14m, after the theatre had been closed for 10 years, with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s revival of Jesus Christ Superstar running for two years, followed by Disney’s The Lion King.

The eventual portfolio of venues included The Point Theatre in Dublin, the Sheffield Arena and Wales National Ice Rink in Cardiff, as well as 23 theatres nationwide, including Hammersmith Apollo and the Apollo Victoria.

Apollo also owned 50% of The Barry Clayman Corporation, which promoted concert and entertainment events, and whose European tour artists include: Riverdance, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones.

Kent music experts react to the scheme

Ashford is "as good as anywhere" for a new music venue, according to Clive Austen, organiser of the Maidstone Fringe Festival.

"It's far enough away from London that it may be more convenient for people to see something there rather than going to the city," he said.

"But attracting big names will be all down to contacts. If he [Mr Gregg] has worked with agents before and they know their artist is going to get paid and the gig will be promoted, that could help attract them.

"In my mind, if it is going to have a capacity of 3,000, I think it would need a smaller venue within it - maybe up to 200 or 300 - which could attract bands that may usually go to Tunbridge Wells Forum or one of the sites in Margate.

"It could get the ball rolling for the venue as a whole, as selling out a space of 300 with an artist who has a solid fanbase isn't necessarily that difficult to do."

Mark Davyd, founder and CEO of Music Venue Trust and co-owner of Tunbridge Wells Forum, says Ashford would be competing with Cardiff, Edinburgh and Leeds if the facility was built.

"As it's an external operator and not being run by the council, that gets it over the first hurdle," he said.

"We are seeing an awful lot of proposals across the country where councils want to build a space under the expectation that if they open it, people will come and play there, but that's just not the case.

"In our little sphere of the creative industry, people often think artists are available because spaces are available, but that's not how it works."

Mr Davyd thinks more live venues are required in Ashford as the town "needs its own music ecosystem".

"Alongside any proposal for a venue of this size, it would be good to see what ABC's plans are to ensure there is a music ecosystem under that," he said.

"At the moment, Ashford would struggle to attract the kind of artist that would fill the proposed space, and work needs to be done to establish that the town needs a facility like that.

"That's nothing against the citizens of Ashford who I am sure love their live music, but it's a historical fact that's built up over a long period of time.

"I used to play in bands in the 80s and we used to regularly perform in the town, but I don't know where you would play in Ashford at the moment.

Mr Austen added: "It's great that somebody wants to look at something like this in Kent and invest in it.

"The general problem with the county as a whole is that there are some great buildings sitting around that could make amazing venues, but no one is willing to push the boat out and do it."

The long history of a town centre landmark

The former Odeon cinema-turned-Mecca Bingo hall was bought by Ashford Borough Council for £1.8 million in 2018.

In the same year, a petition set up by Aldington’s Peter Morris-Kelso calling for the site to be turned into a theatre attracted more than 3,000 signatures.

A year later, campaigners from the Cinema Theatre Association (CTA) wrote to Historic England calling for the 1936-built structure to be given Grade II-listed status.

The effort almost worked, with inspectors calling the hall “a rare survival of an interwar cinema which has undergone comparatively little change since its completion”.

But they stated “while level of survival is a key factor in the assessment for listing, it does not override the importance of architectural quality in determining special interest”.

The site was said to be “neither representative of the typically modern Odeon-style, nor of the best work by architect Andrew Mather”, and that “typical of Odeon cinemas the interior is not lavish, in this case relying heavily on economic applied decoration for effect”.

ABC has long held ambitions to knock down the rear of the building in a bid to open up views of St Mary’s Church.

In 2020, the authority appointed regeneration specialists Milligan to work on the project and it has been “actively seeking interested parties with the vision and operational experience to bring the building back to life” since last year.

Plans revealed last year showed how the rear of the former auditorium could be flattened, with a “modern and flexible” extension of between two to three storeys in height being built in its place.

Mr Gregg’s proposal does not include the extension, instead featuring a walk-through that would link the ‘Ashford LIVE’ development with the Lower High Street.

KentOnline contacted ENO for comment.