A youth sport charity is hoping to take on the flood-hit Level cafe – if it can find funding to carry out the £350k worth of repairs it needs.
The cafe has been closed since 2021 because of the ongoing water damage – which investigations eventually found was caused by damage to Victorian drainage systems caused by the installation of the nearby skatepark.
Last summer, the council advertised a 25-year lease – but warned it needed £360,000 worth of repairs.
No price was included in the advert, but the details said it would be worth about £30,000 a year if in good repair.
This week, the council said an unnamed charity was hoping to take the cafe on, and the council was currently helping it to secure grants to refurbish it.
Councillor Alan Robins, cabinet member for sports and recreation, said: “A preferred bidder has been identified. While we would not go into specific details at this stage, we can confirm this is a registered charity which works with young people facing barriers to participation in sport and exercise.
“We are currently helping this preferred bidder identify grant funding to cover the cost of necessary refurbishment and draw up a schedule of works.”
A brief schedule of works was included in the advert, including removing graffiti, repalcing vandalised doors and replacing the rear doors with security doors after multiple break-ins.
It also includes installing new pipework and a pump system in case of future leaks.
The cafe will need to be stripped out, new stud walls built and the interior painted with biocidal paint to prevent black mould.
Meanwhile, the nearby McLaren Pavilion, where new toilets have been installed, is currently up for lease too, with the council asking for offers of more than £5,000 a year.
The terms of the lease require them to operate the public toilets which take up half the pavilion.
The park has had no public toilets since the loos in the larger cafe were closed in 2022 after persistent vandalism.
Planning documents revealed 96 needles plus condoms, weapons and drugs found there in the first half of 2022.
However it’s hoped that the new toilets will not have the same level of problems as they will be in sight of people using the cafe, which will act as a deterrent.
Councillor Robins said: “We have had some firm interest in the MacLaren Pavilion Café, with a number of viewings scheduled to take place this week.
“Should a suitable tenant be identified and the building let, the plan is still for the café to operate new public toilets for The Level.
“The Level is a fantastic open space which we know is much-loved and incredibly well used, and it will be great to eventually see both these buildings open and being enjoyed by the community.”
So we will end up with two cafes and two sets of toilets and loose a community space, while the other pavilion building used by the police stays empty, which has toilet facilities
Hi Derek, I thought someone was going to take on the Pavilions as a cafe. I’m not surprised if it fell through though, it seemed biased in The Council’s favour.
Its not a cafe just a kiosk. The interested party was a cafe owner from the Open Market but the fitting out costs too much. so its back on the market. Meanwhile the new toilets are closed until they find a tenant
It’s very disappointing that the council and the police haven’t sorted out the vandalism and graffiti problems so prominent on the Level. Let’s hope there will be an improvement.
It’s a deeply rooted issue, exacerbated by the level of supported accommodations around the area.
It’s a great location for a youth sports club and we can only hope this solution works for that building, and to have it occupied would be a plus in itself.
Let’s hope they can find the sports funding from somewhere – like Sport England, or Lottery funding.
This new approach is obviously an admission by the council that there are no takers to use this building for commercial purposes.
Questions still remain over why the originally construction was such a shambles, because this new build was a problem from the start.
The £350K+ figure to get the building up and running again is also surprisingly high. Imagine if you had that sort of figure to spend on your house.
I guess that virtue signalling ‘green roof’ will be the first part to go.
Just demolish the Velo Cafe and have a coffee cart instead on the site
Rather than spending another £350K, that would make a lot more sense.
But there would still be another (lesser) cost in knocking the current building down.
So I guess they are hoping to get extra funding from elsewhere – from other national budgets – to finance the revival of this local building as a community asset. But of course that money will still be taxpayers’ money, one way or another.
Like you say, you could trace pretty much any money back to tax payers if you go back far enough.
Utilising Third Sector’s recourse to funding is not a bad strategy. Although, capital projects is a much rarer thing to be offered.