Yobs spending a penny could cost £1.6m club dear

Mike Nordwind, whose son Mark and wife Sandra have come up with the concept of the “high-end” triple venue, says two telephone boxes on the street outside his flagship club are a ‘disgrace’ to the area.
He said something needed to be done as they were listed buildings, part of the resort’s heritage but were bringing down the Talbot Square area.

He said: “We have spent £1.6m on Home and are due to open to the public on Thursday, but these BT payphone boxes are basically just public toilets.

“They are the most filthy, disgusting things you have seen and they need fumigating and doing up.

“I have tried to complain about them but no-one seems to want to take responsibility for them.

“I tried the GPO and BT but they said it wasn’t them.

“They are listed buildings and if they cannot be moved they need to have something done about them.

“They at least need cleaning out, painting and to be brought up to scratch.

“The post box nearby has had a new coat of paint and looks great but these are a disgrace, not the sort of thing you want outside a building you have just invested £1.6m in.”

He said the family want the club to put Blackpool on the national nightclub map with its three levels each with a different style of dance music.

The family used to run the giant Syndicate club.

Son Mark said the new club, with a 1,750 capacity on the site of the former Rumours club, would be a ‘fine addition’ to the Talbot Square area, with a tramway link to Blackpool North in the offing.

He said: “We re going to be bringing a city feel back to Blackpool.

“The basement is going to be The Urban Lounge and have that city vibe with R&B and dance music but bringing it into the 21st Century.

“The ground floor is to be called Home. It will be a city bar, similar to what you find in Spinningfields Manchester, very plush and classy, table service, booths with a relaxed atmosphere early in the evening.

“Upstairs we will have Headquarters which will be an industrial venue with a warehouse feel. Blackpool people have not seen the top floor of that building for 30 years – it was not inuse .”

The phone boxes are grade two listed and installed around 1935.

They are K6 telephone kiosks designed by Giles Gilbert Scott. They are constructed of cast iron and have domed roofs. The K6 kiosks were designed by Scott to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of George V.

A spokeswoman for Blackpool Council told The Gazette the phone boxes were the responsibility of BT, and any issues with them should be reported to Blackpool Council’s enforcement team.

A spokesman for BT said: “Unfortunately we can’t control what people do in our phone boxes.

“We do clean them every time an engineer visits them as a result of a complaint being made about them and he/she will also assess the paintwork to see if it needs redoing.

“We will be sending an engineer out to clean these two boxes and to have a look at the paintwork.”