Leicester City Centre designated Leicester's new cultural quarter, and is already the site of the Leicester Creative Business Depot(built on the old Leicester City Bus depot and keeping the initials) and the Athena. The LCB Depot opened in July 2004, and by the time of its first birthday had let 37 of 55 units, with talk starting of finding an additional site. Opposite the Athena, a new flagship £60 million Curve Theatre, Leicester, designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects, started construction in 2005, on a site that has been long-disused. It is planned to be ready for handover 2007 to the Haymarket company, who
Leicester Athena Leicester Athena Athena, formerly an Odeon Cinema, is a conferencing and banqueting venue in the cultural quarter of Leicester City Centre, England. The landmark building was originally designed in 1936 in the Streamline Moderne style by Robert Arthur Bullivant as an Odeon Cinema. When it was first opened, the Odeon was one of the most extravagant and largest buildings in the region, seating 2,182. The terracotta panels, which feature mermaids, were hand-moulded by William Neatby at the Lambeth premises of Doulton and Co. The interior was subdivided in 1974, into three small cinemas, and closed in 1997. The building was