Crystal Peaks cinema plan Sheffield: Details emerge as bosses submit planning application for new screens

Bosses at the popular Waterthorpe mall have now submitted the planning application for the cinemas venue, which would be situated near to the McDonalds restaurant, at the southern end of the site, and will provide 12 jobs.

Documents sent to Sheffield Council now confirm exactly how big the auditoriums will be in the new attraction, and pictures show an artist’s impression of what they will look like inside.

The cinema would take over the lower level unit that was most recently occupied by Time Café and the upper level space which was previously a Clarks shop, as well as taking over a storage area.

Documents accompanying the application state: “The cinema would be operated by an established independent cinema operator, showing mainstream Hollywood films. They are looking to expand their presence in the UK market and have identified Crystal Peaks as an attractive and exciting opportunity, which is well suited to accommodating their customer offering.

“The proposed development would provide four screens with the following capacities, split across two floors; Screen 1 – 64 seats; Screen 2 – 64 seats; Screen 3 – 55 seats; and Screen 4 - 71 seats.”

The proposed operating hours for the cinema are 10am until 11pm each day, with the last screenings typically planned to finish by 10.30pm. allowing 30 minutes for people to leave the building after the last film finishes.

In their planning application, Crystal Peaks bosses point out that there was a 10 screen cinema at the centre, the old UCI cinema, from May 1988 until March 2003. It was bigger than that which is planned now, with auditoriums to fit between 200 and 312 people.

They add: “Since this cinema closed in 2003, customer surveys conducted by the shopping centre have consistently found one of the top two most popular requests has been for the addition of a cinema at the shopping centre.

“The shopping centre are now able to deliver on this request for the community.”

They now say the new cinema would benefit Crystal Peaks as the existing units that it would fill are vacant, and have been for a number of years, so there would be no loss of existing retail businesses.

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Clarks ceased trading from Crystal Peaks in February 2021 and Time Café closed in June 2018.

They have also revealed that the independent cinema operator who is looking to run the screens has committed to providing cinema-based events, particularly for the elderly and school children in the community.

They said community initiative and promotions would include lower priced films for pensioners, educational tours to explain the cinema industry to school children and cut price hire charges for daytime use (non-peak) of the cinema auditoria for local events, lectures, presentations and product launches.