OWENS OUT, ATTRACTIONS WITHDRAWN
So what’s left of £400k Town Deal investment?
HUGH SULLIVAN
There’s been a major upheaval in the management of OWENS, the entertainment centre opened last November in the former Debenhams store on Robertson Street. Graham Owen, a Sussex businessman who gave his name to the brand and was co-director of the company C&O which owns it, found his directorship removed in March by its shareholders. His wife Debbie, who was CEO of the company, resigned last month. Financial manager Justin Manning has also been removed from his post.
Replacing Mr Owen on the company board is the ‘C’ of C&O, Lubov Chernukhin, a former banker, whose husband was Russia’s deputy finance minister two decades ago. Mrs Chernukhin herself is seriously rich, identified in a Chatham House report in December 2021 as having given £2.1m to the Conservative Party – the highest figure of any female donor – and having purchased a property in Regent’s Park, London for £100m. In 2014 she famously paid £160,000 to play tennis with Boris Johnson, then London mayor.
Apart from the financial and political tittle-tattle, why is the internal management of a private company offering “family-friendly” entertainment a matter of concern to the citizens of Hastings? Because less than a year ago C&O, in partnership with a separate company Moxie Management Two Limited (MM2) which had bought the freehold of the former Debenhams premises, obtained a grant of £400,000 out of Hastings Town Deal funds – money which could otherwise have been applied to other town centre programmes.
“Immersive experiences”
At that point the entertainment centre was already in the course of development by these companies. Their application was to extend its output over further floor space and to broaden its range of attractions by offering “immersive and interactive experiences” and virtual reality games as well as a more standard array of indoor bowling alleys, crazy golf courses, children’s play areas, and food and beverage outlets.
It’s not clear who initially presented C&O’s funding application to the Town Deal investment panel – the course of that negotiation has not been publicly revealed. But it was Graham Owen and Justin Manning who fronted it to the Town Deal Board itself, making no apparent mention of the financial resources of the company and its backers. Rather, these representatives stressed the community benefits that would accrue from the additional investment, as a local attraction for both visitors and residents, and as a fount of local employment.
Manning told the Board at its meeting on 21 September 2022 – “Entry to the centre will be free of charge, and all of the attractions are individually priced, lower than others across the country. A local resident’s discount pass is also being developed. There will be 75-90 full time equivalent jobs available at the centre, estimated to equate to 120-130 part time jobs.”
Among these jobs would be several for actors participating in immersive presentations: in one entitled “The 1066 Experience”, for instance, visitors would be greeted “with the sights, the sounds, the smells of what it was like to live in this part of the world on the eve of the Norman Conquest”; they would meet, according to Manning: “a peasant woman”, a blacksmith, a priest, a butcher, and King Harold.
Cllr Evans told her fellow board members that there was already a “frenzy among my friends” to get jobs as actors in an immersive show of this kind. Board co-chair Graham Peters asked Manning whether the 1066 village would be “historically accurate”. Manning admitted that there would be potato-eating and hessian sacks – it’s “a bit tongue in cheek”, he concluded.
But no questions were asked by any of the Board members attending the presentation on 21 September – who included Sally-Ann Hart MP, Andrew Harvey and John Bownas of Hastings BID and Sean Dennis of Hastings Chamber of Commerce – as to the financial basis of the company or why it should need an extra £400,000 to extend its range of attractions. In particular, there was no consideration at Board level, at least in any open meeting, as to whether C&O might have gone ahead with the investment from its own resources in any event; nor whether it might be more prudent to wait for the business to start operating (as it was clearly going to do regardless of contribution) before committing such a large amount of public funds. The Board were told merely that their investment panel had selected this investment – along with a separate £100,000 grant to Freedom Works for refurbishment of the top three floors of the Debenhams building – out of eight bids assembled at short notice after withdrawal of another project (redevelopment of the Sports Direct building in Wellington Place).
In a report delivered to the Board on 30 June 2022 the Town Deal Programme Team, which seems to have consisted of borough council officers, had stated baldly that the Debenhams project “met the objectives of the town deal programme and will be able to deliver within the required timescales”. A “business case” for it, which was treated as ‘commercially sensitive’ was subsequently approved by DLUHC (the Department of Levelling Up, Communities and Housing), the ultimate providers of the funds, and the Board were asked to sign it off – which they duly did.
There were, no doubt, conditions attached to the £400,000 grant, as with any award of public sector funds, that required the recipients to demonstrate to the Programme Team and/or to DLUHC that the money was duly spent on building, fit-out and other costs, though there seem to be reasons to doubt what evaluation of costs or monitoring of expenditure has actually taken place. What’s not known, or at least has not been revealed to the Town Deal Board in any public forum, is whether any conditions were imposed to give assurance that the enterprise would continue to be managed in accordance with its presented prospectus.
“Immensely proud”
But who would be so churlish as to doubt that? Mrs Chernukhin, identified as the financial backer of the enterprise, though not at that stage appointed as C&O director, made a speech at the official opening in November attended by Hastings mayor James Bacon and other borough councillors, declaring that she was “immensely proud to bring to fruition projects that help to revive our high streets, create jobs for local people and grow local economies”.
Graham Owen highlighted the distinctive approach taken by C&O. “We wanted to do something different, something immersive and adventurous. …entire shop floors have been converted into ‘other-worldly escapes’” – not only the 1066 village but a smuggler’s cave, a wild west saloon and “a foray into the vacuum of space”.
Cllr Bacon responded with enthusiasm that “mixing education with fun and culinary delights is a perfect recipe for success”.
Leader of Hastings Borough Council Paul Barnett wrote on the Town Deal website praising MM2 for investing in the site and “finding excellent tenants to create new facilities…An example of how to do regeneration in a way that serves the community rather than ignores it.”
The reality
What then is the reality five and a half months on? The overall spread of games, virtual reality experiences and hospitality areas appears intended to appeal to cross-generation families, though both older and younger members may baulk at the pervasive bright lights, dark recesses and very loud music. The ‘attractions’ seem to have been parcelled out as concessions shared between subsidiary operators. Mr Owen in fact still operates two crazy golf courses on the site, even though he no longer has any management position in the company. But following his removal as director, the 1066 Experience has been withdrawn, as has the Wild West saloon and any other “immersive” experiences which require more than a minimum level of active staffing. There remains, according to the woman on reception last weekend, a Jurassica Live presentation which does seem in description to involve some physical interaction; a number of virtual reality programmes such as a Soar Tour screen adventure; and a game called Vault, which she described as a virtual competition to rob a bank. But she admitted that the only entertainments for which there is high demand for bookings are the bowling alleys.
There are no discounts offered to local residents. Children are charged the same prices as adults, and there is general complaint among those who have sampled the attractions on offer that the prices of most of them are unaffordable as family entertainment, certainly on any regular basis.
Is this the revitalisation of Hastings town centre which the Town Deal promised to foster? And did its very wealthy backers need a £400,000 top-up from the public funding entrusted for this purpose?
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I just read this article your paper and it’s exactly what I’ve been thinking the whole time. Owens made a lot of promises to the local community and none of them have come to light. There is no discounts and the place is empty because of it. We tried the dinosaur experience and it was an absolute waste of money. We mailed management to tell them our thoughts and give our feedback on how they could better things … No reply whatsoever. It’s pathetic and added nothing to the community. It could be the perfect hub for locals (young and old) to spend time together but instead it’s another eye-sore that will be gone soon. Saddest thing is the wasted potential but even more so … The funding they “stole” that they didn’t need … This could’ve been used to support so many more Hastings gems. Answers are needed for sure! These people didn’t need the money and don’t care about Hastings in anyway. This is basically a repeat of our lovely Pier.
I agree with Jamie totally. Who decided to give them £400,000? And on what basis? If Owens haven’t honoured their promises, is the money not retrievable?
What a total waste of time and money that could have been spent on other things for the town. We need proper fun things for people to do. Lives here all my life and hope that it can come back to being a lovely seaside town again.
And now it’s closed. It’s been a dodgy enterprise since the off. They claim it’s due to safety issues. I doubt I’m alone in being incredulous. They’ve pocketed hundreds of thousands of tax payers cash unwisely given to them with Hastings BC blessing I understand. It’s not building surveyors who should be visiting but forensic accountants.
Everything is going wrong at once in Hastings. Bankruptcy for the council is surely only a matter of time. It’s behaving as though it’s already bankrupt with all our cash going on the homeless, the numbers of which have massively increased very quickly inviting questions of how the criteria are being applied.
Thank goodness our hard earned money is being used to build a hotel for the hard up Whitbread group.
It appears that Hastings Council is asleep at the wheel. What a criminal waste of money. They should all be sacked IMO. And what about that vast space next to the Oval which has the church St Marys Star of the Sea and many buildings falling into disrepair? This church is presumably a listed building but the roof has many missing tiles which must be damaging this fine building. I’ve spoken to a member of Hastings Council who says it’s all private property and the Council can do nothing which I find deeply shocking. Anybody else concerned by this?