3:59pm Wednesday 18th April 2007
By Pat Stannard
AFTER years of disuse, a magnificent piece of Waltham Forest's history - the Great Hall at the old Leyton Town Hall - is coming back into the limelight.
Business people and entrepreneurs are being given an opportunity to turn it into a going concern, on condition that they benefit the general public as well as themselves.
Lee Valley Estates and Hiltongrove are spending more than £10 million developing the former town hall, latterly known as Leyton Municipal Offices (LMO), as a business centre for which some tenants are already lining up.
And they have decided to run a public competition to find a tenant for the Great Hall, with the Guardian as their media partner.
In taking this approach, they are in good company.
The LMO in Leyton High Road, now a Grade II listed building, was also the result of a competition which attracted more than 30 entries from architects.
The brief finally went to John Johnson whose design was put into bricks and mortar between 1894 and 1896.
It is fair to say that local businessmen Michael Polledri, chairman of Lee Valley Estates, and Guy Davis, chief executive of Hiltongrove Business Space, are in love with the LMO building with its magnificent marbles and spacious rooms, some of them wood-panelled. They talk of it with unbounded enthusiasm.
It is important to them that the Great Hall's tenants make the most of this asset.
Mr Polledri said: "It is crucial that we find the right tenant, who can fully exploit the particular features of this wonderful space."
Mr Davis added: "We are looking forward to seeing some great ideas about the different visions that companies might have for its use."
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