Back to the Future

This building - the pointy thing - is in Central Milton Keynes.  It’s scheduled for demolition.  MK council voted to stop the demolition.  The developers appealed and won.  In its place, a 21 story tower block.  And your point is, I hear you ask?

The Point is part of the history of Milton Keynes - mine and Anniemay’s. We had both moved to this futuristic new city - roughly halfway between London and Birmingham and Oxford and Cambridge - from different parts of the country.

The Point opened in 1985 - when Marty McFly was whizzing back to 1955.  One of the first multiplex cinemas in the UK - 10 screens - it also housed a night club, a bar and other places where people could have a good time.

I can remember, not long after it opened, meeting a group of friends every Sunday lunch time to see a band who played jazz in the basement.  In my head they were called ‘Five guys named Moe’.  Or something like that.  Not that I was a particular fan of jazz; it was just a cool place to hang out with friends.

Years later, it would be the turn of people like teenage Chris and his friends who would frequent the night club …….. ‘nuff said.

After the Millennium, The Point began to decline.  Competition from other Multiplex cinemas in MK drew audiences away and the nightclub and restaurants followed.

The building eventually closed and became a non-designated heritage site, of historical interest.  Possibly hysterical interest as well.

Despite the best efforts of some big brains, no-one really knew what to do with it.  The most promising (in my view) was a SMET (Science, Maths, Engineering, Technology) hub as part of MK’s plans to build an education facility within the Business District.  But that seems to have faded away, much as the building itself is destined to do.

It seems hard to believe now, that this mirror-fronted ziggurat was once the tallest building in CMK.  At night the red neon-lit pyramid would light up the sky, visible for miles around, guiding us home.  

For all its faults and sometimes negative press, Milton Keynes was a great and exciting place to live and work in those early days.  The Point is a symbol of that.

“Don’t always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone….”  Joni Mitchell