Welcome to the pleasure dome: Leicester Square Hippodrome opens as casino after £40m refit | London Evening Standard (original) (raw)

A once illustrious West End venue where stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland and Stevie Wonder performed in its heyday reopens tomorrow after a makeover costing more than £40 million.

The 112-year-old Hippodrome, on the corner of Leicester Square and Charing Cross Road, is to be reborn as London’s first casino, cabaret, eating and drinking entertainment complex.

The formal opening by Boris Johnson marks the end of a seven-year project by bingo hall magnates Simon Thomas and his father Jimmy, who have sunk tens of millions of pounds of the family’s fortune into the Grade-II listed building.

The main casino sits in the cavernous atrium of the former music hall, but there will also be two further gambling floors, five bars, a restaurant, four private dining rooms, a 200-seat cabaret theatre and a two-floor outdoor smoking terrace.

The venue was originally due to have reopened in April, but the deadline slipped to July because of construction problems.

“If we ever had a budget, we’ve blown it completely,” said Simon Thomas. He said he was hoping to attract tourists who just wanted to come in for a drink and a meal as well as gamblers, many of whom are likely to be drawn from the local Chinese community.

He said: “If people want to come in, watch a show and have a few drinks without doing any gambling, we’ll still be happy.”

The 93,000 sq ft casino will be the biggest in the country, with more than 450 staff and a capacity of 2,000. It will be open 24 hours a day and will be free to enter to over-21s only.

The first cabaret act in the theatre, where seats will cost from £25 to £35, will be veteran crooner Tony Christie, followed by jazz singer Kate Dimbleby and burlesque performer Polly Rae.

The family spent £600,000 alone on restoring Victorian plasterwork that was hacked off during a conversion in the Fifties known as “Operation Pickaxe”, and have commissioned a mural from Sir Peter Blake depicting many of the stars who performed at the venue over the last century.