Supporters of the Spa Pavilion campaigning for the theatre to be saved.
Passionate team is needed for the Spa Pavilion
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
3:12 PM
HOW dare councillors decide to get rid of our seafront theatre?
Just three days from food chaos
DURING Michael Portillo’s Great British Railway Journey’s visit to Felixstowe, it was said that if the port was closed for three days we would start to run short of food.
Could that be true?
Three days of wind and we would all be fighting in the supermarkets and grabbing whatever we could get, or facing queues for necessities.
The port is vital to our economy with 40 per cent of all our container trade – goods of every description possible – coming across its quaysides, but surely we have more in reserve than half a week’s worth of food.
I queried it with port executives at the community reception, and it turns out Portillo was correct. Some goods would run short leading to panic buying of others and shops emptying rapidly.
It costs Suffolk Coastal £242,000 a year to provide the Spa Pavilion – an attraction for the resort providing a range of shows to bring in visitors, and a base for our am-dram groups.
That sum is 1.75 per cent of the council’s budget.
The people of Felixstowe provide around 30pc of the council tax for the district.
It does make me wonder sometimes what I pay my district council tax for – apart from having my bins emptied (and these days you have to sort the rubbish and put the bin out yourself).
My theory is that one day we will pay council tax simply to pay the wages of those staff collecting the council tax.
Of course, others will applaud the fact that Suffolk Coastal’s council tax is very low and the authority is debt-free, thanks to the £30 million it gained some years ago after selling off its council houses.
However, that means it has very little available to spend for our benefit – except on those things it must do by law.
Now it’s looking to cut even further – and that’s why it claims it can no longer afford to run the much-loved Spa Pavilion.
It is a shocking decision because surely the council has a duty to enable us to enjoy the arts as much as it does sports and other activities.
This building should be an arts hub for our community.
For many years I have written that the venue needs re-modelling.
Cut it down to 500 seats – ideal for our amateur companies, for plays, as a cinema showing arts film nights, and an intimate setting for bands and comedians, many of which love performing in those kind of theatres with the promise of a wonderful atmosphere from sell-out crowds.
The extra space created by cutting the auditorium could be used for a dance studio, art gallery, conference venue and meeting place for all kinds of activities, including poetry readings, writers’ groups, art clubs and drama rehearsals.
There is huge opportunity to make better use of the restaurant and bar with its fabulous seafront position (very much like the Pitlochry Festival Theatre which overlooks the River Tummel), and possibly a gift shop could be included.
What is needed now is a trust to be formed with desire and vision and a real heart for our community.
It could be a blessing in disguise. Let’s hope all is not lost.
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1 comments
As we seem to be in statistics-scattering mood: surely a situation which has resulted in every seat sold being subsidized to the tune of some £7 by the local authority - using whose money - yep, ours - can't be allowed to continue. Cut the capacity to 500 seats - does anybody have the faintest idea as to how much that would cost, and what would happen to the remaining structure? And I can't imagine that hard-pressed council tax payers will be pleased at the thought of bearing, or even sharing, the cost of a project of that scope. The Spa Pavilion's days as an entertainment venue are over, and have been for some time. Ticket sales continue to fall, as the prospect of watching a series of uninspiring 'tribute acts' understandably doesn't appeal, whereas the prospect of bigger names - and cheaper theatre seats - in Ipswich clearly does . Let's keep the building by all means, but adapt it for the purposes I have previously suggested - as a gallery, conference centre, seafront museum and heritage centre, with a couple of lecture rooms that could easily also serve as small-capacity theatres for the odd drama festival and panto. I'm sure others can suggest other, eveb better, ideas. But - PLEASE - let's not kid ourselves that it can survive as a serious entertainment venue.
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Norfolk Born
Friday, February 3, 2012