| Buy Properties For Sale by Installment | Doha apartment For Sale |
Celebrities are fighting to save the bar in West London!
In a bout with the new owner, Eddie Izzard and musicians Paul Simonon and Cerys Matthews are helping Kensington Palace Hotel landlord, a 150-year-old local bar.
Locals are outraged by proposals to demolish the Kensington Park Hotel, one of the oldest live music venues in London, in order to preserve Ladbroke Grove's beloved landmark as a community asset.
The pub is part of the history of the annual Notting Hill Carnival. Tom Jones received £10 for his first London performance at the Upper Theater Bar in the 1960s, and The Clash played in Punk in the 1970s.
The KPH has a terrible history, as it is affectionately referred to. The serial killer John Christie reportedly worked behind the bar in the 1940s and in 1971 the movie 10 Rillington Place, with Sir Richard Attenborough, featured about his crimes.
The future of the pub has been in doubt since it was sold by Punch Taverns to Swade in 2013. The KPH was controlled by music promoter Vince Power, but he was expelled last year. The KPH is still open, but its owners say they wish to sell the Victorian structure.
At the beginning of this year a coalition of local people, led by Power, started a rescue bid under the authority of the Localism Act to designate pubs "Community value properties.
"
The KPH was declared a property in 2015. Thus, a community group would have six months to make an offer if it requests the opportunity to buy it. The pub owner would not be allowed to sell it to someone else during this period.
The moratorium ends on 6 June, after which the owner will sell the property on the open market. "We are confident that we can make a quote, but we are not confident that he can recognize it," said Power.
Owner of Swade, Steven Archer who paid 3,2 million pounds for the pub, declared that he was open to KPH United offers and insisted on not having made a decision as to the future of the house. "I think the best use is as a pub," he said, adding that "it would be good to return the upper sections to some kind of use." "There is a dire need for some kind of refurbishment. Investment is essential."
Power claims that Kensington and Chelsea Council will not allow the pub to be renovated as flats, but he fears that instead, it will become a trendy shop hotel, restaurant and bar.
He said, "It's a community pub right now." "None [his ordinaries]... can go to the pub because all the pubs have been socially cleaned in this town. To do so, they don't have to put a bouncer; they can just cost it."
The KPH was made up of people from neighboring council estates, residents of long standing living in Ladbroke Grove well before it became gentrified, and younger, wealthier people. "It's the last pub in the region not made into a middle-class, upwindingly mobile, predominantly white gastropub," says Power.
Paul Simonon, 61, Clash's, supports the offer from KPH United to buy the pub. "If we don't preserve Ladbroke Grove's heritage, it will become a tourist trap like Covent Garden," he said.