Mr. Ken Livingstone
Mayor of London
Greater London Authority
Romney House
43 Marsham Street
London SW1P 3PY
Dear Mr. Livingstone,
Although rich in many ways in its arts and culture, London continues to fail in its ability to provide sufficient and appropriate venues for many performing arts. Compared to other capital and major cities across the world, even major cities within the UK, notably Birmingham and Manchester, there is a marked lack of concert venues with a 1000-2000 seat capacity, a size clearly in demand and suitable for the likes of the major national and international orchestras, ensembles and large choruses. I welcome your support of the recently approved planned upgrades to the 2600-seater Royal Festival Hall but both it and its much smaller sister the 900-seater Queen Elizabeth Hall are of different dimensions, are not of the same class acoustically as other halls and are very difficult to get in the door to hire.
Merton Council has in its hands a wonderful opportunity to address this issue in Wimbledon and yet it is choosing to throw it all away, thereby infuriating a community strong in its belief that the Council, whatever its political colour, would keep its word by replacing Wimbledon's Civic Hall that was torn down for a shopping centre more than 10 years ago. Several groups, including Wimbledon Choral Society, now have to seek venues outside of Merton, indeed often outside of London, to perform.
A private initiative was started some years back which proposed the construction of a combined Arts Centre & Concert Hall in Wimbledon to complement all the other excellent facilities and features that the town had to offer; a thriving theatre, very good transport links and an established name known throughout the world. The cost to the taxpayer? Nothing. The whole project would be funded privately. All Merton had to do was agree the conversion and use of an existing open-air car park in the town centre, rent it at an acceptable rate and give the project a chance of developing and surviving.
When first mooted, the project attracted considerable support from many of the leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists, professional and amateur, since it offered the opportunity to perform in an acoustically perfect concert hall within London, along similar lines to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Please see www.wimbledonartscentre.org for further details. Top names and companies, like Arup Associates, were brought in to establish the feasibility of such a project. A brochure was published, realistic and viable business plans were put together and initial conceptual designs of the building were drawn up based on the target site (known as "P3") which was a mere 250 metres from the rail and underground station in the heart of Wimbledon. All of these were submitted to Merton Council and their own independent consultants agreed that the project was entirely feasible within the scope defined. A key element of that scope was the size of the hall. It was shown clearly that a seating capacity of less than 1000 would not be economically viable as it would not attract the quantity and quality of bookings required to make it work.
For over 10 years, the Council has dodged the issue claiming there was no money for such a project, of course ignoring the point that written large in the proposal was the fact that it would be funded by private investment. Yet, in their Wimbledon Town Centre New Millennium brochure, issued in 1999, they label clearly the P3 site as the "proposed Community Arts Centre". With an apparent degree of reluctance, the Council decided to give the project a small chance to prove itself but only offered a one year option of a 99 year lease subject to the project showing it could raise a certain amount of funding.
It took almost 10 years for the Bridgewater Hall to get from first roots to completion and that was supported by the local authority in Manchester. Merton, on the other hand, showed little support and was only prepared to give the project just 12 months initially to produce anything, although this was extended a bit. At the end of this period, the Council declared that the project had failed to gain the required funding, was unable to show how the full funding would be obtained and, consequently, the offer on the P3 site was withdrawn.
What Merton Council chooses to ignore is the fact that they had planted a "poison pill" by negating the car parking obligations by Friends Provident (owners of the adjoining land) for the Safeway supermarket and planned entertainment complex for the ludicrously low sum of £1.68m, including covenanting that the target P3 site should at all times provide for 150 car parking spaces, even during any development, thus adding considerably to the potential cost of the whole scheme. They were not very forthcoming on the details of this item so how on earth could the Arts Centre project convince investors and obtain sufficient initial funding in under a year with that millstone round its neck?
Further adding to their short-sightedness, Leader of the Council, Andrew Judge, and his team have pulled the plug on the scheme without giving it the space, time and support it needed to get established properly, claiming it would never work and, yet again, stating it could not be supported by public funds. In addition, though, they now seem to be going down the line of proposing a 300-400 seat hall tucked away behind the Wimbledon Theatre, this being in total contradiction to the recommendations and advise of their own consultants who had accepted the Arts Centre's 1000+ seats as being the economically sound option. Do the people of Merton want to support this small white elephant with their public funds? I doubt it very much. The Council has also said that if the smaller hall won't work then they'll sell the land for yet more shops and offices as if we need any more. Neither of these options would be a suitable replacement for the old Civic Hall. The Council will not have kept its word.
Sir, London is a city that draws people from all over the world. It has endless history, modern attractions, a great theatre tradition both centrally and in the suburbs, improving public transport links and excellent galleries and museums. It still lacks, though, concert venues of the size and acoustics in demand from musical and other performance groups. We have the Albert Hall and RFH that seat thousands and a bunch of 300-400 seat venues but nothing really of the quality required in between.
Merton and London have a fantastic opportunity here to witness the construction of a first class venue of international stature, which would be financed and driven by people who truly want to make it work, on a site easily accessible from central London. Why is this chance being squandered by apathy, ignorance, politics, narrow-mindedness and financial short-sightedness?
Will you, the Greater London Authority, the Cultural Strategy Group and the London Assembly support this project and help us persuade Merton Council that they really must give the original scheme a proper chance of survival?
Yours sincerely,
Neil Dennis
Chairman, Wimbledon Choral SocietyCopy to Elizabeth Howlett, London Assembly Member for Merton & Wandsworth
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