Scottish Land Fund Application Submitted

We are delighted to announce that our latest major funding application has been submitted to the Scottish Land Fund!

This Stage Two application, if successful, will grant our organisation with the funding to purchase the Broadway, bringing our iconic building into community ownership. You can now read our full press release below. We would like to thank current owners Buzzworks Holdings Ltd. for their continuing support for the project, and to thank all of our members, supporters, and volunteers! Without your passion and dedication, our project wouldn't exist, and we are thrilled to have reached this milestone together!

The future of the Broadway belongs to you.

Press Release:

Major funding bid to buy the Broadway Cinema in Prestwick submitted:

The charity responsible for bringing back an iconic Prestwick cinema have delivered on their promise to apply for major funding to purchase the building from current owners Buzzworks Holdings Ltd.

Friends of the Broadway Prestwick, the team behind the revival bid, submitted their funding application to the Scottish Land Fund this week. The Scottish Land Fund helps to make community ownership achievable by giving groups like Friends of the Broadway Prestwick access to the funds needed to purchase land and buildings on behalf of their communities.

Guy Walker, Chair of Friends of the Broadway Prestwick, says: “We promised our community in April that we would apply for this funding and we have now delivered. It is not as easy as filling in an application form. The entire charity has been hard at work getting ourselves on to a professional footing, obtaining building valuations, architectural feasibility studies, and building a business case. We will learn in November if our application has been successful”.

John O’Donnell is Vice Chair of the group and led the bid: “Being able to purchase the Broadway for the community will be a game changer. We are currently limited in our ability to apply for funding to bring the Broadway back because we don’t currently own it. We are already working with our regional National Lottery advisors and have applications ready.”

Kyle Macfarlane is the youngest of the Friends of the Broadway Prestwick directors and says: “We are incredibly lucky to be working with Buzzworks who currently own the site. We signed with them a legal ‘minute of agreement’ which allows us to purchase the building as soon as the funds become available. Without their support and willingness to engage with the community, there would be no project.”

On 29th April 1935, the Broadway opened its doors to audiences with a grand opening ceremony and the film “The Barretts of Wimpole Street”. The building operated as a cinema until the mid-1960s when it began a slow transition to bingo, before seeing a brief revival of cinema in 1976. The last ever film show, “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Next”, was shown on 20th November that year. In 1981 the Broadway was converted into an amusement arcade and leisure facility with squash courts in the former auditorium. It operated until 2003 as Prestwick Leisure Centre.

Buzzworks took over the venue in 2005, with plans to turn it into an exciting new hotel bar, restaurant and nightclub. However, after several years of hard work and dedication applying for permissions and licences to do so, the bid was ultimately unsuccessful due to the building type and various other factors.

Spokesperson for Buzzworks Colin Blair says: "Buzzworks were happy to ensure that there would still be a positive outcome for the building within the local community, by working alongside Friends of the Broadway to ensure the latest project came to fruition."

The results of the funding bid will be known in November.