I WAS just down by the pier in the wind and the rain today – there was nothing to do, and nowhere to hide.

The decision to demolish the Imax is a bad and wasteful one because with minor tweaking it could provide useful covered space and a wide range of activities, for holidaymakers and others in wet weather, together with a proper roof garden for when the sun shines.

Britain is in decline and we no longer have money to waste on this scale.

The facade needs to be modified; it doesn’t have a grand entrance with weather protection, that invites visitors in, and that advertises the delights inside, instead it has miserable little aluminium doors and a blank wall of obscured glass, that says to people “keep out”.

When I look at it I think immediately of Franz Kafka’s book, The Castle.

Inside, the building needs prominent escalators that entice the visitors to the higher levels, to the wide range of activities inside, and the roof garden.

Instead we see what appears to be a cramped and unwelcoming space with an ‘elfnsafety’ compliant staircase to god knows where, and a lift.

Nobody wants to climb stairs these days, and nobody wants to wait for a lift.

The rear of the building is pretty awful but could be rectified by the addition of holiday flats built in traditional materials on the wasted space directly behind the building.

Access from within the main building would make these more interesting; there is an auxiliary staircase already in situ. The upper flats would get a view down the beach to the IOW.

The sea side of the building is OK and the road side needs nothing more than a few fake pilasters, a paint job, and a few revenue earning neon signs.

(The reason you didn’t see them in Victorian Bournemouth is because they didn’t exist; the Victorians would have loved them!) The building doesn’t really obstruct anyone’s view unless your hobby is standing in one of the car parks which serve the Pavilion.

Coming down Bath Hill, the Royal Bath Hotel obstructs the view far more. The demise of this building owes more to dead hand of bureaucracy, than to the people who have decreed that it should be ‘hated’, and who actually believe that they are going to get a view of the sea “in perpetuity”, for a few seconds, on the odd occasion when they drive down Bath Hill.

The building may not have been ideal in the first place but to knock it down now is inexcusable.

C W WILSON Cavendish Road, Bournemouth