(To go directly to find out what you can do to help the campaign, click here.)
Background
Up until 1989,
Wimbledon had a wonderful Civic Hall right in the centre of the
town which seated well over 1000 people. It was used
by a wide variety of interested groups for social gatherings,
business conferences, civic ceremonies and artistic performances
including choral concerts put on by the Wimbledon Choral Society.
In its latter years it had been neglected and
was in need of not only redecorating but upgrading to modern
standards. It was, though, a much-loved venue and
attracted many from far and wide. To much local and
wider outcry the incumbent Merton Council decided to demolished
the hall in 1990 to make way for what was to become the Centre
Court Shopping Centre. However, in making this decision,
the Conservative Council at the time promised to replace this
facility with one of a similar capacity and nature. That
promise has never been fulfilled, no matter what the colour of
the Council.
Many performing groups and societies found themselves relegated to singing in local churches or much smaller halls in the borough resulting in much lower audiences. Wimbledon Choral Society, a thriving popular local group which would fill the Civic Hall regularly at its concerts, found itself driven out of the borough to perform in venues large enough to take it. We expected the Council to hold its promise so that once more Wimbledon, its local residents, its borough residents, and people throughout the area could benefit from a large venue.
The Wimbledon Hall Trust
was formed by a wide variety of local and national interested
parties to oversee the progress towards reestablishing the provision
of a community hall to meet local community needs and those further
afield. There were two sites identified as being
viable and available, known as P3 (currently the Hartfield Road
Car Park next to the bus station) and P4 (adjacent to Wimbledon
Theatre). With the recent expansion of the Theatre,
the P4 site can only support a medium sized hall with a small
number of seats (300-400 max), a stage, ancillary rooms, single
dressing room for all artists, parking, etc. Not
a really viable proposition at all.
Wimbledon Arts Centre Ltd (WAC) was set up by the Trust to produce
a fully costed business plan to demonstrate the viability of
an Arts Centre/Concert Hall based on the P3 site. To
keep the politics even, in 1996 the Labour Council granted planning
permission for a building on the P3 site, thus acknowledging
the Conservative's initial pledge. The accepted basis
was that the revenue earned by the Council from the site had
to be at least that obtained by operating it as the present car
park. Have a browse at www.wimbledonartscentre.org to understand
the initial concepts behind the project. WAC
appointed internationally renowned Arup Associates to prepare
the feasibility design for consultation and viability, which
was later acknowledged by Merton Council officers and the Greater
London Authority (because of the significance of the building)
as likely to be acceptable and viable in terms of meeting the
business plan. It showed very clearly that
any centre/hall either had to be large enough (1000-seater or
more) to be self-supporting or it would need substantial financial
support from somewhere else - probably the local public authority.
The plan was investigated by Merton Council's own
paid business consultant and approved.
So, here we had the Council being offered, at no cost to the ratepayer, an opportunity to back a magnificent Jubilee building, major international concert hall, smaller community hall, with ancillary rehearsal rooms, arts, conference and recording facilities, catering, etc, in a massive easily accessible catchment area which could attract major international sponsorship and donations, as well as being demonstrably commercially viable. It didn't take a great deal of imagination to understand what such a building could do for Wimbledon, let alone South West London, in terms of attracting spin-offs like hotels, more visitors to Merton, additional employment opportunities, and so on.
The plan for an acoustically-perfect
performance venue attracted a lot of attention from large artistic
groups not only in the UK but also abroad, especially the well-known
orchestras. They were crying out for a proper concert
venue since, as constantly bemoaned in the national arts media,
the nation's capital city London is very short on such places.
The Royal Festival Hall is the only similar venue but even that
is in need of upgrading. The Queen Elizabeth
Hall is smaller and its future is uncertain at the time of writing.
Examples of what is needed can be found in many other
cities throughout the world, including Manchester and Birmingham,
but not in this country's capital city.
With a degree of reluctance, Merton Council finally agreed to
offer WAC a one year option of a 99 year lease on the larger
P3 site subject to a certain number of largely unrealistic conditions
being met. Most of these in fact were fulfilled,
but one which was not was a requirement for WAC to raise or secure
an initial £7million backing. The Council
declared that WAC had failed and therefore the offer was no longer
valid and was withdrawn. Two things to note
here. First, in a comparable project, the superb
Bridgewater Hall in Manchester took almost 10 years to get off
the ground. For Merton to limit the offer to just
12 months (although this was subsequently extended by a few months)
shows very little serious intention on the part of the Council
to enable the project to succeed.
Secondly, and what the Council try to keep very quiet, is that they had planted a "poison pill" by negating the car parking obligations by Friends Provident (the owners of the adjoining land) for the Safeway supermarket and planned cinema multiplex for a ludicrously low £1.68m several years ago, including covenanting that the P3 site should at all times retain 150 car parking spaces (including during any development). This automatically put a significant building starting price on any development for the provision of massive underground parking. Insufficent information was forthcoming from the Council regarding this car parking covenant which made WAC's task nigh on impossible.
In 1999 the Labour Council published their Wimbledon Town Centre New Millennium pamphlet ear-marking the P3 site as a proposed Community Arts Centre. What ever happened to that?
The Council has simply not given this project the chance to grow and survive. It responds by saying that there are no funds to support such a project. It is not being asked to support it financially - it's a private initiative as a result of Merton Council's failure to fulfill its promises. It claims that WAC was unable to demonstrate how it would fund the project. How could it with only a very short period in which to get any funding in place and when the Council's parking poison pill was in the middle? And yet, fully detailed business plans presented to the Council were acknowledged by the Council's own consultants as being entirely viable so long as the Concert Hall was a 1000+ seater venue.
Now, at a town centre meeting in mid-February 2002, the Council decided to pull the plug and mooted that it would prefer to try and sell the P3 site to a developer purely for shops and offices. Yet more shops and offices? Is that what we really need? In addition, they have set up a joint working party with the Wimbledon Hall Trust to find a suitable replacement hall site. They favour the small 300-400 seat hall on the P4 site, totally ignoring the fact that the WAC business plans approved by their own consultants show this not to be viable. Would the "rich and famous" taxpayers of Merton be interested in coughing up the money for a funny little community hall that would be a drain on resources once it is built? The Council are quite clear that they have no funds for building a hall. Surely it would be very irresponsible to risk tax-payers' money on a project that cannot be sustained? Do they want to be responsible for a 'white elephant'?
What can
YOU do?
So what can you
do to help us and the people of Wimbledon, Merton, South-West
London and way beyond?
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You can join the "give us our space" campaign for a proper full size Arts Centre and Concert Hall to be built, not some small building tucked away behind the Theatre. WAC's proposal is not in competition with the Theatre, it's complementary to the Theatre. Further details can be obtained at hallcampaign@freeuk.com. | |
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You can call or write to the Leader of Merton Council, Andrew Judge, expressing your support for the building of a 1000+ seater hall and demanding to know why the Council is failing to support this private initiative by withdrawing the offer on the P3 site. The address for your letters is: | |
Councillor Andrew Judge, |
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 (020) 8545 3365  (020)
8545 4075 |
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You can email Councillor Andrew Judge at andrew.judge@merton.gov.uk | |
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You can use Merton Council's website to submit your questions and comments directly to Councillor Andrew Judge via his "online surgery" by clicking here. | |
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You
can call or write to the Council's Head of Planning & Public
Protection, Mr. Steven Clark. The address is the
same as noted above. His email address is esenquiries@merton.gov.uk. (020) 8545 3238 (020)
8543 6085 |
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You
can call or write to the Council's Director of Environment Services,
Mr. Richard Rawes asking where there is provision for the promised
Concert Hall in the Council's much vaunted Community Plan. The
address is the same as noted above. His email address
is esenquiries@merton.gov.uk. (020) 8545 3051 (020)
8545 6085 |
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You write to David McAlpine of McAlpine, Thorpe & Warrier, the consultants who have been commissioned by Merton Council to assess the likely demand for and feasibility of a new Public Hall in Wimbledon for performance, meetings and exhibition space, as if enough consulation has not been done already. The address for your letters is: | |
David McAlpine |
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To read Neil's letter to Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, click here.
Thank you very much. If you have any questions or require further information about the campaign then please contact the team at hallcampaign@freeuk.com.
