Animate complex given green light

Plans for Preston’s city-owned £40m cinema and leisure complex, Animate, has been given the green light by the council’s planning committee. The committee resolved to approve the application subject to receiving no objection from Lancashire County Council highways and a number of conditions.Animate will be located on the city’s former indoor market and will host an eight-screen cinema, bowling alley, food hall, new restaurants and bars and a new public square. The scheme, designed by Leach Rhodes Walker, will stimulate economic growth and development in Preston and is expected to generate more than £7m of extra economic activity annually while creating 140 full-time equivalent jobs.Hollywood Bowl was recently named as one of the anchor operators for the project.The development is one of six major projects planned under Preston’s Harris Quarter Towns Fund Investment Programme, for which the city was awarded £20.9m from the government’s national Towns Fund initiative in March 2021.The council is developing Animate in partnership with Maple Grove Developments, part of the Eric Wright Group.