Metro revamped

MUMBAI: When Mumbai’s developers have been given a heritage property, their automatic instinct has been to send in a wrecking crew. If thwarted by conservationists, they have either subverted rules — for example, adding an apartment block as an ‘extension’ to a bungalow or keeping the exterior as a shell, but gutting the interiors. Or they have just let the property rot in the hope it just falls down by itself.

But miraculously, with the historic Metro cinema, none of this has happened. For a while, it seemed that this hall with its heritage Art Deco design would go the gutted-interiors way, with Adlabs Films, who were signed on by the Gupta family (Metro owners) as long-term operators, looking to create a modern multiplex inside.

But luckily Pooja Shetty, Adlabs’ director, says, “After a couple of months of struggle and design, we realised there was no marriage between Metro and those designs. So we went back and decided to make it a classy, stylish and comfortable theatre and retain as many things as we could.”

To understand how radical this decision was, one must consider the trade buzz that the development-with-conservation exercise has cost its makers almost thrice of what it would have cost to make a modern theatre.

Other Mumbai developers must be having heart-attacks. Yet, Adlabs doesn’t regret the Rs 15 crore it has invested in the project. For this they’re getting the six screens, the 1,491 seating capacity, the plasma displays and digital bells and whistles required by modern cinema halls, but in an utterly distinctive space.

“We have a world-class facility at an iconic place,” says Tushar Dhingra, CEO, Adlabs, with satisfaction. That matters in a market where multiplexes are becoming more common, so the novelty value is being lost. And with one multiplex much like another and most showing the same films, the impetus to go to a particular one will be lost. Unless it offers something different — and that Metro does in spades.

There’s the mix of old and new, for example, where wood interiors have been matched with stainless steel and veneer fittings - a reminder that Art Deco in its time was not old fashioned, but a high modern style, with streamlined forms and new materials. Instead of keeping things tastefully muted, a lot of vibrant red, a key Art Deco colour, is used.

For premium customers, there’s now the Ebony Lounge created out of the old Cigar Bar, once a glass-lined vantage point into the theatre, but more recently just used as a dumping ground for old posters. Now, it’s an exclusive 30-seat screen with an attached lounge and bar, where gourmet food from an exclusive menu will presented with personalised silver service.

Other little used spaces like this have been put to work, including a cellar that everyone had forgotten about. “It was used to let out the air from the cinema hall above,” says Ms Shetty, but now two screens have been put in the basement space.

Despite the cost, Mr Dhingra says, Adlabs is confident of recovering its money in 4-5 years. Today, when Metro opens again with one of its trademark blockbuster release, Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, one can look at the interiors and consider how close we were to saying goodbye to them, but were saved, because for once, a developer showed some imagination.