Sussex Exchange Follows Azur into Closure
HUGH SULLIVAN
The Sussex Exchange restaurant, bar and cinema complex on the Queensway link road has closed after its operating company folded into insolvent liquidation. Prospective customers who had made restaurant or film show bookings were told last week that they were indefinitely cancelled.
It appears from documents filed with the Companies Registry that the company The Sussex Exchange Ltd, whose sole director and shareholder was Elie Fakhoury, was put into administration in July last year, owing £260,000 in unpaid tax. It was also in debt to a large number of trade creditors, and to its landlord Sea Change Sussex, which originally developed the site with public regeneration money.
Sea Change at that stage accepted that the operator’s business had been hit hard by the Covid pandemic. It agreed a repayment plan for reduction of the arrears of rent while allowing time for Mr Fakhoury to find a buyer. It has to be inferred from the closure now announced that no buyer has been found.
These are the second major leasehold premises in Sea Change’s portfolio to be repossessed this year in circumstances of the operator’s insolvency following the closure in January of the Azur Marina Pavilion on St Leonards seafront.
Over five months later the Azur remains closed, though a Sea Change spokesperson said last week that the company has received “a good response” to its marketing of a fresh lease. There are, it was claimed, 11 separate parties who have put forward proposals for taking on either the whole or part of the building. “The company is now carefully evaluating these proposals to assess the best way forward,” he said – a process which is expected to take “a number of weeks”.
It emerged following the repossession of the Azur not only that it was suffering from severe water ingress problems but that there was some conflict over responsibility for them between Sea Change and Hastings Borough Council (HBC), who are the freeholders of the building. The council apparently retains an obligation to maintain some parts of the building under the terms of the superior lease. However, neither Sea Change nor HBC has been willing to expose their differences to public scrutiny. The Sea Change spokesperson said last week that the two parties “have been working together to investigate the problems and carry out works to address them, and the situation has now been resolved”.
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