Is Mohammad Choudhry going to save Govan's Lyceum Cinema — or ruin it?

It all appeared so official. When he announced last November that Govan’s derelict Lyceum Cinema would reopen this summer, owner Mohammad Choudhry did so with a couple of Labour politicians in tow. That one of them, Dr Zubir Ahmed, is a renowned surgeon who had been elected to Westminster just a few months before added an air of respectability to proceedings. That the other, Paul Sweeney, is a building-obsessed MSP who sits on Glasgow City Heritage Trust brought a dose of authenticity. 

Appearances can be deceptive, though. 

Known locally as the owner of a Govan Road convenience store, Choudhry acquired the neighbouring Lyceum a number of years ago. Exactly how many is hard to say: the opaque nature of Choudhry’s business dealings, with close to 70 entities registered to him at Companies House, make his interests difficult to track. He appears to have acquired the building from bingo operator Gala Coral in 2010, before effectively buying it from himself twice more since. The most recent acquisition was in 2017, when he paid himself £150,000 to purchase it via his real estate vehicle Rocck.

What is clear is that the Charles McNair-designed listed building, which started as a 1930s picture house before being converted for bingo later on, has lain empty for so long it has fallen into a state of dangerous disrepair. Regeneration on and around Govan Road has been so successful that the hop-on, hop-off tourist bus now stops there, with Fairfield Heritage, Govan Old Church and the Pearce Institute putting the place on the map. In its dilapidated state, the Lyceum stands out for all the wrong reasons. 

The generous view is that Choudhry’s plan to turn it into a café, cinema and food hall could not have been better timed. But not everyone is feeling generous, least of all Govan councillor Ricky Bell.

Not long before Choudhry unveiled his most recent transformation plan — a previous planning application for the site was rejected in 2021 — Bell had gone public with a Lyceum vision of his own. The SNP representative and city treasurer wanted to facilitate a community buyout of the “stunning” and “iconic” building, he said at the time, so local people could take the lead on how it should be run. Community spaces and revenue-generating gigs would all be in the mix, with something that “brings in money and serves the community” sure to be “a win-win for Govan”. 

When we meet in a café just a stone’s throw from the former cinema, Bell is dismissive about Choudhry’s plan and the political support he has mustered. The businessman might be the Lyceum’s legal owner, Bell says, but he has done nothing with it over ten-plus years “except allow it to deteriorate to such an extent that the council have deemed it unsafe to enter”. Choudhry suddenly coming up with a new plan to revamp it so soon after Bell revealed his own intentions hardly seems credible, he says. That Labour’s Ahmed and Sweeney would get on board strikes him as “political opportunism”.