A new theatre café bar has been granted a licence to operate until midnight at a historic venue in Brighton’s “cultural quarter”.
Theatre-goers will be able to enjoy a late drink after shows at the refurbished Dome Studio Theatre – formerly the Pavilion Theatre – in New Road after a council licensing panel hearing.
The theatre is nearing the end of a five-year restoration project that included the neighbouring Corn Exchange.
The new café bar, to be run by Lucky Bean Ltd, can seat 34 customers inside and 118 outside. Those outside would be at tables in New Road or to the south of the building, overlooking the Royal Pavilion Gardens.
Sussex Police and Brighton and Hove City Council licensing officials objected to the licence application by Lucky Bean, which also runs Redroaster, in nearby St James’s Street.
Officials said that the application breached the council’s own licensing policy, especially for the busy centre of Brighton where the rules are aimed at reducing crime and disorder.
Police said that New Road is in the heart of an area that is troubled by street drinkers – and officers dealt with more than 800 incidents within 300 yards of the venue in just one year.
Lucky Bean director Michael Palmer, 51, told the council licensing panel that there would be no bar, with customers expected to sit at a table and order food and drink from waiters.
But he wanted the flexibility of a “café licence” – not a more restrictive “restaurant licence” – so that people leaving shows at neighbouring theatres could enjoy a glass of wine without having to order a full meal.
The site has been leased from the council by the Brighton Dome and Festival Trust which said that it spent a year seeking the right catering partner to operate the café bar.
The Dome’s director of operations Maxine Hort said that Redroaster went through a long process to show that it was the right company to run the café. She added that the venue would not be a pub.
The application received 18 letters of support from neighbouring businesses.
The licensing panel, which was made up of three councillors, Zoe John, Anne Pissaridou and Dee Simson, said that they understood the concerns raised by the police and council officials.
But despite concerns about the “challenging issues” in New Road, there were exceptional circumstances, the panel said.
In a decision letter, the panel said: “It is within the Dome environment and is their catering partner. This, in the view of the panel, gives a special level of protection and strong oversight by the Dome.
“The hours applied for are less than that of the current Dome licence and, although there are café not restaurant conditions, the panel considers that it is clear this is primarily a food-led operation and is, to great extent, future-proofed by the terms of the lease entered into which stipulate this.
“There are unique features of the application in terms of the applicants themselves whose charity and community activities can be considered exceptional. The amount of supporting representations, including from other businesses, sets this application apart.”
Lucky Bean has agreed to sign up to the Business Crime Reduction Partnership as one of the licensing conditions.
An initial request to be allowed to operate for 24 hours on New Year’s Eve through to New Year’s Day was dropped although the venue could still seek a “temporary” permission.
Looking forward to sitting outside, being pestered by drunks and beggars, in the heart of the “cultural” centre of Brighton.
Very disappointing work, by our Councillors – overriding the objective and technical views of two sets of professionals – Sussex Police, and the City Council’s Licensing team!
With no report of any dissent among the Panel the conclusion has to be that all three main Political Parties are either foolish or stupid, and/or each Party’s conduct is being directed by Dark Forces or vested interests?
So let’s try to take a common-sense view:
In that area there is clearly no reason, not even ‘Special Circumstances’, to permit additional public facilities for the sale of alcohol, under whatever arrangements, surely?
So if the theatre had wanted an indoor bar or café ONLY for patrons attending a performance there’d be little or nothing to object to (as theatre bars for patrons are a very long-standing tradition).
And for some fresh air on balmy summer evenings then a modest screened-off space in Pavilion Gardens, accessible only from inside the theatre, and again only for for theatre-goers, would also seem to be tolerable?
But with most of the capacity, for any category of seated drinkers, being on the Public Highway of New Road, it once again looks as if our elected City Councillors have put commercial interests ahead of their clear duty to serve and to protect the best interests of society in general (where over-consumption of alcohol in England has already become a costly major health and behavioural problem!).
What the above article sadly fails to address is how much rent + business-rates will our City Council be charging the venue for the use of a significant area of Public Highway, especially as extravagantly paved with some £1m of Norwegian granite?
Probably zero (apart from a modest non-profit licence fee), as our cash-strapped Council seems not to recognise the inequity of permitting businesses to trade from land held and maintained in trust for all City taxpayers?
And also implicit in the article is that us taxpayers seem to have been taken for muppets, with what sounds like a SECOND renovation of the Corn Exchange within about 20 years – but why?
Granted the first renovation was deeply flawed acoustically – it didn’t take many people to be in the Exchange for their voices to boom around the echo-chamber that had been created!
So whose error was that? And should us taxpayers be required to pay to remedy design errors we were given no opportunity to challenge at the earliest stage?
Yes, building acoustics is close to rocket-science, but as the wonderful acoustics of the Old Market venue in Hove have shown for more than the past 20 years, acoustic expertise IS available – when the effort is made to pay for it!
We can but hope that the second renovation of the Corn Exchange will have resolved the acoustic flaws from the first ‘renovation’?
“Food led” -come off it,/ It’s a mass outdoor bar right next to atreet drinkers’ hub and to Pavilion Gardens which is supposed to be a centre of street crime and anti social behaviour. Yet they allow this application….overriding the advice of Sussex Police, and the Council’s Licensing team.
Appalling.
Greens out!
What about all the noise pollution that the Council keeps going on about? This is going to make it much worse.