NEW ACT AT WHITE ROCK?
HUGH SULLIVAN
The cabinet of Hastings Borough Council (HBC) is scheduled to debate the future of the White Rock Theatre at its meeting on Monday evening, 3 July.
It appears clear from a report prepared by Victoria Conheady, the council’s deputy chief executive, that the lease held by current operators Trafalgar Theatres will be neither renewed nor extended when it expires in seven months time at the end of January 2024. But the council is also advised not to redevelop the site, the freehold of which it owns, for a non-theatre use.
The recommended course is instead to find a new, preferably long term, lessee who will keep the building as a theatre and cultural venue while not requiring any subsidy, which HBC can no longer afford to pay.
Over the first ten years of its tenure commencing in 2008, Trafalgar was receiving a heavy subsidy each year, subject to making the Sussex Rooms in the basement available for community use, and to accepting responsibility for repairs and maintenance of the building. This has reduced from £550,000 to £125,000 per year over the past five years. It might seem therefore that the council is setting its hopes too high in seeking to retain live performances without subsidy. Along the coast, the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill may be managing it, but only with huge financial support from Arts Council England (more than £500,000 over the current four year period 2023-26 as a National Portfolio Organisation on top of a recent £400,000 capital grant for a technical upgrade). Ms Conheady’s report indicates, however, that there is at least one external commercial operator that has approached the council expressing willingness to take a long lease without subsidy.
The cabinet is recommended to approve a “transparent process”, managed over the next few months by an agent who specialises in the leisure industry, to ensure that HBC negotiates the best terms of lease or rental it can, “minimising the financial burden on the council and ensuring the continued use of the venue for live performance”.
No “mothballing”
What is to be avoided, the report advises, is any period of “mothballing” when Trafalgar leave – whether “cold”, i.e. with minimum caretaking just to safeguard the building in terms of security and integrity, or “warm”, keeping it maintained in a state of readiness with services functioning and regularly tested so as to allow operation to resume quickly.
A timetable is therefore proposed under which agents are instructed before 31 July to conduct a marketing campaign over a period of six to eight weeks. Their aim should be to agree heads of terms with a successful bidder by the end of October. A lease would then be completed by the end of December to commence on 1 February 2024.
In the meantime the old act will continue. The pantomime Cinderella will run for its traditional December season, preceded in November by Trafalgar’s usual staple of tribute bands – ELO Again; Upbeat Beatles; Get It On; Magic of Motown; Sound of Springsteen – and a touring production of The Mousetrap. Last show currently taking bookings is Guitar Heroes (tributes to Hank Marvin, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix et al) on 20 January.
What the future holds, both for commercial theatre and music and for community performances, should be more knowable by then.
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