I share the general enthusiasm for the so-called London Eye (I prefer to think of it as The Wheel), and so I hope that this little spat fizzles out quickly:
The London Eye could close down after being served an eviction notice after a £1m rent demand – an increase of more than 1500%.
Its landlords, the South Bank Centre (SBC), said they are not getting enough rent from the land that holds part of the wheel’s supporting structure.
If the rent is not paid they say the Eye will have to be removed in a month.
None of the parties wished to comment but said negotiations are taking place in the hope of reaching a settlement.
According to a document seen by Kate Hoey, MP for Vauxhall, SBC sent out the eviction notice after issuing a demand for the increased rent.
She told BBC London on Thursday: “I find it quite outrageous that the South Bank Centre has now turned around and is trying to be like a greedy developer.
“It will not go down very well with people in my area and Londoners and the country as a whole.”
Oh well, there you go, that’s politics for you. And it must be politics because an MP is involved, and the South Bank Centre is being accused by that MP of trying to be like a greedy developer, which would never have been said if it was a real developer.
I have no idea of the details of the agreement between whoever now runs the Wheel and the South Bank, but personally I think that the Wheel is by far the most beautiful object on the South Bank, and that anything calling itself the South Bank Centre ought to be thoroughly ashamed of itself for even pretending to threaten to get rid of it. Presumably it is strapped for cash, for some reason associated with all the other abominable structures on its patch.
Come to think of it, it occurs to me that there is a big plan in motion to try to rescue the now grotesque acoustics of the Royal Festival Hall. As this Guardian piece says:
They’re awful. Simon Rattle once said that playing there “saps the will to live”. Even the RFH’s resident orchestras, who have historically been defensive about their home, now openly admit it “leaves a lot to be desired” (that’s David Whelton, who runs the Philharmonia).
I once heard Rattle conduct Mahler’s mighty Resurrection Symphony in the RFH. It sounded like a very bad recording.
Anyway, has this wild attempt to gouge more money out of the Wheel got anything to do with this RFH plan? The attempt to turn the RFH into a proper concert hall will apparently be costing quite a lot.
The Royal Festival Hall (RFH) in London will close after its last performance on 26 June to undergo a GBP71m, 18-month refurbishment. The work is part of a wider GBP91m development of the South Bank Centre on the River Thames.
GBP71m? GB91m? Yes. I do believe there might be a connection there.
I thought the whole thing about this was that they are demanding a £2.5m rent increase not for the actualLondon Eye but for a very small (less than 20′ x 20′) area where one of the support struts rests. Given that one of Blair’s cronies (Lord Hollick) is effectively the landlord for this patch of grass this sort of thing does not surprise me in the least. Hollick was more recently famous for being voted out of the chairmanship of United Business Media and then, following his dismissal at the AGM, demanding a vote to renumerate him with £250,000 to ‘cover his personal costs in leaving the company’.
Wow! Red faces for whichever suits agreed to those rental agreements! I bet all involved will give up their salaries, cars and expense accounts as they resign in shame.
Maybe the government could help out by compulsory purchase of that bit of land? Obviously at ‘important people’ prices, not ‘peasant family home for generations’ prices. £10m? £100m? £1000000000m?
It’s a tricky one. I’m torn between the fact that I like the London eye, and the fact that I like to watch very large companies gauging each other and crying about it.
It’s pretty safe to assume that the eye is going nowhere while it continues to make a tidy profit, and that it’s going to be paying a lot more rent than it agreed to before it was wildly successful.
I’m also pretty sure that this media story was designed as a negotiating tactic by one side or the other.
Nothing to see here…
Julian Taylor writes:
“Given that one of Blair’s cronies (Lord Hollick) is effectively the landlord for this patch of grass this sort of thing does not surprise me in the least.”
Well fingered, Mr Taylor! Hollick is one of the shittier creatures in the jungle. He’s another of the Za-NuLabour corporate stormtroopers who seem to believe it is their God-given right to squander shareholders’ money to promote their own half-baked political ideas.
The proper response from the company’s owners would have been to send Hollick a bill, rather than vice versa.
I think Lonon Eye should be the first must for tourists to visit. It gives general idea of what London is and how it is. I enjoyed it myself a lot.