Sources tell me (interestingly they are Lib Dem) that the Rose Theatre deal with Nadhmi Auchi is on the skids.This is not much of a secret as it appears that Sir Peter Hall was very despondent during a recent Reader's Festival event. It looks like the eighteen months of negotiation have floundered and certainly my past involvement showed me that more and more demands were being made and we were getting a worse and worse deal.
I also gather that the Friends' had a somewhat depressing meeting last week when it was clear that the deal was not going well.
As many will know I am a supporter of there being a Kingston Theatre but have always been against the idea that Council Tax should be used to hand over "our" building to an international company. I have nothing but respect for Mr. Auchi in this process as he is after all a businessman and he always made it clear that what he was doing was a business deal and not pure philanthropy.
However, the Council handing over control of the taxpayers asset to General Meditteranean Holdings was wrong. If this has fallen through and the theatre is set to flounder then my last recollection is that the Council we will be writing off £2m of loans it made to the Trust, hardly a good way to start a new administration.
So what now? This project faces an uphill struggle because we have managed to waste an entire year chasing this property deal. The Lib Dems seem to have few choices. Choice one is that they stump up the extra £3-4m required. I really cannot see that happening but who knows with this party; they supported the previous deal.
Alternatively they can bring in another theatre operator but given this messy situation who is going to want to take it on? Any new operator is going to be worried by the bad publicity that this collapsed deal is going to bring. Equally we are now at their mercy as we have developed few alternatives.
The real problem is that the terms of the deal with St. George (the developer of Charter Quay) means that the building can only be a theatre and cannot be turned into anything else. I presume we can get around this by asking St. George but I imagine this comes with a price tag.
If everything fails then we will have an empty building sitting opposite the Guildhall to remind everyone what happens when politicians make brave decisions and then do not put in the leadership and work to make it happen. It appears that the days of dinners for Mr. Auchi at the House of Commons, hosted by our MP's, were over as soon as the Lib Dem administration decided to go ahead and little has been done by politicians since then to bring this deal off.
It is a total mess and such a shame for the Borough as a theatre has been a dream for many of us for such a long time.
Interesting that this broke just after the election?
16 comments:
Councils should not be involved in either running theatres or doing property deals. Thye do not have the skills.
What would the chances be of negotiating with St Georges for the building to be turned into extra flats in the Charter Quay development - and any proceeds left after paying off what has already been spent distributed amongst community arts groups in the Borough. For example I understand that the Corner House in Tolworth has no or little grant this year.
Certainly no more public money should be used to prolong this project. Some money may have been wasted but I think that at least an effort was made to achieve something terrific and sometimes Local Authorities have to take risks and I do not think that people should be condemned for that. But it is now time to take a bold and perhaps unpopular decision to end this saga. If previous manifesto commitments had been kept to then it would have ended before the election.
To turn it into flats sounds fine in principle but I think the costs for St. George to do this would be prohibitively high as they have moved off site and finished the development. There is the added problem that this is a space not dissimilar to a warehouse and has hardly any windows.
Yes Local Authorities should be brave and sometimes take risks. However before you take risks you ought to make a decent fist of analysing that risk and having thought through the "what if it does not happen". There is no evidence of this having happened. In fact what the administartion did was take a decision to go this route and then sat back and let the Chief Executive run the negotiations and one would presume the flack when it goes wrong.
I agree with you that had cool heads ruled in the Lib Dems and they had stuck to what they pledge they would do in their manifesto then we would not have wasted the last 18 months that have been spent courting this money.
All and any monies salvaged from this shambles must be returned to the C/Tax payers by way of a reduction in next years rates.
It is not the role of councils to squander any of our money on arty farty projects.
The lottery or private funding should be the only source for grandiose but useless projects....just look at the Fountain so beloved by yobs who put washing up liquid in it.
Perhaps thats what was intended as some form of "installation" art?
rgds Poppy
I had the fortune to have a guided tour around the theatre the other day by St George.
I have to say it is a great building and, were it to be finished, it would be a major asset for Kingston.
I would urge everyone not to start thinking of turning this building into more flats, which can be built somewhere else, but to support any charitable effort to get this building up and running.
However, charitable effort does not mean Kingston council funding it. We pay enough council tax as it is.
It really is a shame that this situation has been allowed to happen. The Lib Dems have been flattered into going for completely the wrong type of project by Sir Peter Hall's involvement, and have been throwing money at it to get it done, despite their promises to the contrary. I still hope they can pull it off, but from all the recent press coverage it seems as though they've given up.
Its pretty indicitive of the way the Lib Dems have handled all their big projects over the past four years. They get terribly over excited to begin with, with lots of fanfare, then when things begin to go wrong they retreat behind a wall of silence. For example, has anbody heard anything about the fantastic new tram system, or the wonderful shiny new Park and Ride recently?!
Come, come Sir, you forget that the Tories ALSO supported the building of the theatre - just like they nationally supported the Iraq war and then retreated the moment a drop of blood was spilt or the mood of the public changed. This is exactly what gives politics a bad name, never being man enough to admit their mistakes or be accountable for their own actions.
Anon 3.16
You are absolutely right. As the post I made says I have do and will support their being a theatre in Kingston. The difference is I do not believe it should be funded using Council Tax payers money. Both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems said this is their manifestos in 2002. The Lib Dems broke their promise and we did not.
Interestingly the Lib Dems never mentioned the theatre in their manifesto for the recent elections! Still as they never told anyone about their manifesto, and they never kept to it last time, it probably does not really matter
If you had spoken a little louder at the time Kevin about no public expenditure on this project, fair enough but you were pretty quiet as the records show.
Still, I wonder what you would have said had it now come to fruition and was a success - that YOU could have done it BETTER, sold the land for much MORE, turned a PROFIT for the borough AND afforded to give away FREE tickets to every household? Hmmm...
If it was a success the Council would have still given away a public asset when they promised not to.
You really do not pay much attention if you think we said nothing against it. It was in most of the literature that went out during the election. A year ago it was all over the papers that we were trying to prevent it. Instead the Lib Dems secretively rail roaded it through without any debate and with Council officers doing all they could to make sure that debate was stifled.
So the record shows we spoke up very loudly against it.
I'm sorry Kevin but shouting about it this year and last year is not what we are talking about. You know very well that you and your colleagues supported this 8 years ago - and it's all very well as the detail emerges back-tracking by saying that it should never have happened. It doesn't happen like that in real life so why pretend it should have done in this situation? I'm sure there are many a thing you would have done differently in hindsight but...
You are talking nonsense again. Please get yor facts right if you are going to make allegations.
Yes, I have ALWAYS supported the building of a theatre in Kingston - as has the entire Conservative group. I STILL support having a theatre in Kingston and the group still has that position - unless they changed it in the last 3 weeks!
What I do NOT support is selling the asset and sinking more public money into it. The decision to do that was only taken last year by the Lib Dems.
But that is exactly what the Tories suggested in 2001 in order to make their proposals for a lower council tax rise add up - to sell council-owned buildings in Fife Road Kingston. So what's the difference?
Does not even compare. The reason we were looking to sell it was that it would give the Council some money tol enable us to reduce Council Tax in a particularly dificult year. The sale of the theatre meant the Council would get nothing, no money, no cash, nothing. The theatre is being handed over to an Iraqi businessman and the Council will get no money in return. All the money will go to the theatre trust to fit out the theatre.
In any case you are wrong - it was 2002 we proposed it.
But isn't that the same year you also propsed to close the Alfriston day centre to save money?
Anon 10.05
No!
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