The doors of the Black Cap have been closed for 10 months now. You might wonder whether there’s any real hope of that changing. And if you saw reports last week about new plans to turn the site into a straight venue, and the doomy speculation those reports promted, you might think the fight is already over.
But actually everything is still up for grabs. And, remarkably, there’s a solution within reach that would count as a win/win for all involved.
This solution has been floated by Chris Clark of #WeAreTheBlackCap – the campaign dedicated to reopening the Black Cap as an LGBT+ pub and performance venue – and it seems to offer a way forward that gives everyone what they want.
In a nutshell, it proposes that the company planning to convert the Black Cap into a straight venue should instead reopen it as the LGBT+ space the campaigners want. They can then use the profits to support the chain of new venues they have always planned to create.
They should do this not only because it’s the right thing to do but because it is the best business outcome for them under the circumstances.
In fact, it’s a terrific business outcome – because their only alternative is disaster.
Background
The Black Cap, one of London’s most iconic LGBT+ venues, was closed without warning last April by its freeholder, Kicking Horse Ltd, and former operator, Faucet Inn.
The Cap was making a lot of money at the time but its owners thought they could make a killing on London’s insane property market by flogging the site off for redevelopment.
The pub’s supporters, on the other hand, thought that the Black Cap’s 50-year history as a space of LGBT+ community, culture and heritage was worth defending. They immediately formed a campaign, #WeAreTheBlackCap, dedicated to reopening the space as an LGBT+ pub and cabaret venue.
For the campaigners – and I am one of them – this is a social, political and moral issue. Places like the Black Cap are the repositories of our unique and fragile history. They are the places where we can connect with others like us and express ourselves on our own terms. And, even as progress is made on legal equality for LGBT+ people, they are vital safe spaces for a community that remains disproportionately vulnerable to violence, homelessness, mental and physical ill health and social exclusion.
Since the Black Cap’s doors closed, its owners’ plans have consistently come unstuck. The #WeAreTheBlackCap campaign, meanwhile, has gone from strength to strength.
Kicking Horse had planned for café chain the Breakfast Club to move in but that deal quickly fell apart amid immediate outcry led by the campaign. A plan to sell the freehold also collapsed in September.
Seeing off the Breakfast Club is just one of #WeAreTheBlackCap’s accomplishments.
• It has also succeeded in stopping Kicking Horse from overturning the Black Cap’s status as an Asset of Community Value (a protective designation given by the council).
• It has carried out a survey conclusively showing the strength of feeling among the community around reopening the site as an LGBT+ pub and cabaret venue.
• It is about to launch the Black Cap Foundation, a charitable extension of its campaigning work.
• And it has maintained a weekly presence at the Black Cap site through a regular Saturday afternoon vigil, keeping the Cap’s presence in the community alive.
The vigil is the only use to which the Black Cap has been put since last April – aside from a lively occupation by squatters, that is. Otherwise, the site has lain empty and disused. This is a loss for its freeholders and a relative win for the campaign.
#WeAreTheBlackCap will not have achieved its aim until the Black Cap is reopened as an LGBT+ pub and performance venue. But successfully preventing its conversion into anything else counts as progress in the meantime.
Who are Ruth & Robinson?
In December, Kicking Horse signed a lease with another potential new operator, Ruth & Robinson, which is underwritten by the Imbiba Partnership. Ruth & Robinson (R&R) has applied for planning permission from Camden Council with an eye to reopening the Black Cap site – but under a different name, and not as an LGBT+ venue.
R&R plans to open a chain of venues across London; you can read about their plans here and (if you confirm that you are a “high net worth individual”) here. The basic idea, dubbed Project Paradise, is to launch “an all-day & all-night bar and restaurant concept, targeting London’s ‘villages'”, with a “bar, bakery and oven” template adapted to suit different locales. “For example, Camden is edgy and alternative whilst Chelsea is traditional, the City is for those doing business while the West End is for those who ‘dress down’.”
After signing their lease with Kicking Horse, R&R approached #WeAreTheBlackCap in a gesture of community engagement. The campaign has met the company twice and members of #WeAreTheBlackCap have found the people of R&R amicable, and the basic concept of Project Paradise quite appealing on its own terms.
But R&R have been clear. The place they want to open would not be called the Black Cap and it would not be an LGBT+ venue. The plans they have submitted to the council confirm this. Such plans are fundamentally incompatible with #WeAreTheBlackCap’s basic aim of reopening the Cap, and the campaign would have no choice but to oppose R&R.
To be clear, the main problem isn’t with the Project Paradise concept itself, which actually sounds quite nice. The problem is that R&R want to start by imposing it on the site of the Black Cap. And the Cap’s community won’t stand for it.
And if R&R persist in going up against the community, their chances of coming out on top are very slim. If the company hasn’t already familiarised itself with Immovate’s failure over at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern site, they should.
Why R&R’s current plan is probably doomed
Just because a company announces its plans and submits some proposals to the council, that doesn’t make it a done deal. And Ruth & Robinson’s odds of success in realising Project Paradise at the Black Cap are very bad, for a range of reasons.
Organised community opposition
Like so many others companies before them – at the Black Cap and at other sites such as the Royal Vauxhall Tavern and Joiners Arms – R&R seem not to have done their homework. Only after signing a lease, it appears, did they realise that their chosen site was not in fact simply up for grabs. It came with a community attached – a passionate, articulate, efficient and uncompromising one at that when it comes to the existential survival of the venue.
Since signing, R&R have made efforts to engage with that community but so far without recognising that their plans as they stand put them on a collision course with #WeAreTheBlackCap – which has seen off unsympathetic developers before and can do so again.
If R&R go ahead, they and Imbiba will get a taste of what the Breakfast Club was served: the PR nightmare and business humiliation that result from a misconceived plan to crap all over an irreplaceable and internationally renowned site of community, culture and heritage for a vulnerable but vociferous minority. Things would get ugly for R&R and Imbiba.
Support for the Black Cap from Camden Council
And the community campaign isn’t the only thing they have to worry about. R&R also have to get their proposals past the council’s planning committee. And, time and again, Camden Council have shown themselves to be staunch defenders of the Black Cap.
For one thing, they have they repeatedly knocked back planning proposals that compromised the Cap’s ability to work as an LGBT+ pub and cabaret venue.
And for another, they granted the Cap Asset of Community Value (ACV) status specifically to reinforce those priorities. The status lasts for five years and applies even if a venue’s owner closes its doors.
On April 8 2015, Camden Council granted the Black Cap ACV status, stating that it “furthers social, cultural and recreational interests which cannot be met elsewhere” in the borough. It acknowledged the pub’s “iconic status for Camden’s gay community since the 1960s”. It hailed the Cap’s “important cultural role as a renowned venue for drag and cabaret”. And it recognised that the Cap “plays the role of a community centre for the local LGBT community in the absence of such a dedicated facility”.
In practice, this means that – even after the closure of the pub – Camden Council is unlikely approve any new plans for the site that fail to value those elements of the Black Cap.
Reinforcing this point, Camden councillor Phil Jones, who sits on the planning committee, this week told the Camden New Journal that, when it comes to plans for the Cap site, “it’s important that any proposal fully reflects the historic identity of the venue as an LGBT cabaret venue and is not just another generic bar”.
Another councillor on the planning committee, Danny Beales, this week retweeted a tweet of mine noting the council’s track record. Immediately after the pub’s closure, Beales started a change.org petition calling for the Black Cap’s reopening that has attracted more than 8000 signatures.
An untried business plan
R&R might be undaunted by such obstacles if they were in a robust business position and had a tried and tested format to implement. But neither of these seems to be the case.
R&R’s last directors hoped to develop a chain of “Brooklyn-style” bars. But their flagship site, The Fourteenth Colonie in Clerkenwell, closed within 10 months at a cost of £1.2m to R&R’s backers. Following its failure, those backers – Simon Charles Wheeler, John Connell and Christian Alexander Elmes, now joined by Dragonfly Finance – brought in a new managing director, Sarah Weir.
Project Paradise is Weir’s concept. In itself, it seems like a sound one. But there is always doubt regarding the success of an untried concept. What is not in doubt is that if R&R try to impose that concept on the Black Cap site, in business development terms they will be entering a world of pain. And when the enterprise fails, R&R will have two consecutive cock-ups on its books.
That’s the bad news for Ruth & Robinson.
Why everyone wins if R&R choose to reopen the Black Cap instead
Here’s the good news for Ruth & Robinson. They’re sitting on a goldmine – if they can bring themselves to recognise it.
The #WeAreTheBlackCap campaign is all about the community and cultural benefits of reopening a historic LGBT+ venue like the Black Cap. But it is also all about achieving success in the real world. That’s why the campaign has always stressed the commercial viability of the venue and the economic damage of its pointless closure as well as the detriment to the LGBT+ community and London in general.
The moral case for reopening the Cap as an LGBT+ pub and cabaret space is compelling. But so is the Realpolitik argument. It’s not just the right thing for R&R to do. It’s also their best chance to make a success of their situation.
The Black Cap’s prestigious status
The Black Cap is an icon of LGBT+ community and culture that is known around the world, loved across London and acknowledged by Camden Council as a local landmark. Instead of seeing this prestigious status as an obstacle, R&R should recognise it as an invaluable business opportunity.
In business terms, it’s a distinctive and profitable asset. And in practical terms, R&R – like any other potential redeveloper – will in any case struggle to get planning permission for a vision that doesn’t take this prestigious status and its implications seriously.
The Black Cap’s proven ability to generate serious money
Ahead of its closure, the Black Cap was consistently among the top earners of Faucet’s chain, bringing in up to £50,000 per week according to those with first-hand experience of its operation – despite shocking underinvestment in the building that left its plumbing and wiring in need of serious attention.
A refurbished, reopened Black Cap would be a cash cow, benefiting not only from its historic community customer base but also from the positive publicity coup that would be associated with its revival. A detailed projection by Chris Clark of #WeAreTheBlackCap and Make Public estimates annual turnover going forward of between £1.7m and £2.6m.
Readily available operational support
In terms of operation, R&R could do worse than approach the Cap’s former team, many of whom are currently working at Bloc Bar. Or, if they prefer to stay there, other experienced LGBT+ venue managers and staff could easily be recruited given a serious business plan and the venue’s prestigious pedigree.
The same applies to a core group of regular performers. If former resident troupe the Family Fierce were interested in picking up where they left off, that would send a strong signal of continuity. But if they prefer to remain based at Bloc Bar, any number of the hugely talented queer performers on London’s scene would leap at the chance of a residency at the iconic Black Cap.
This could even be an opportunity to break new ground, as the Black Cap has done so often during its half-century of performance history. Perhaps it could offer the capital’s first resident troupe of queer performers of colour.
Benefits for Project Paradise’s longterm strategy
So why should R&R – and their backers the Imbiba Partnership – change tack and do this? For the most compelling reason a business could ask for: it will make them a lot of money and contribute to their core strategy. This is the great strength of Chris Clark’s suggestion: it really is a win/win proposition.
The stated strategic aim of Project Paradise is to open multiple sites running its “bar, bakery and oven” concept. By running a successfully renewed and community-engaged Black Cap as an LGBT+ pub and performance venue, R&R will generate a strong return than can be put towards their stated strategic aim of a multiple-site concept.
They might have to give up on the idea of 171 Camden High St being the flagship venue for Project Paradise, and bump the concept’s launch back a year or so. But if it’s a good concept, then by definition it will be applicable to multiple sites.
A reprised Black Cap, though distinct from R&R’s Project Paradise concept, would be a fast restart and would still offer chances to road-test important operational aspects of that concept. It’s also, don’t forget, probably the company’s only realistic chance to secure planning permission. And, if run with the genuine consideration for the community needs highlighted by the ACV status, it could generate the goodwill of thousands of potential supporters of further R&R venues.
There are also strong signs that practical cooperation with the community is entirely feasible. Their fundamental strategic difference apart, relations between#WeAreTheBlackCap and R&R have been cordial and constructive in tone. Clark describes Sarah Weir as “energetic and personable” – someone the campaign could certainly imagine working alongside – which is more than anyone ever said for Faucet Inn.
If R&R and Imbiba are willing to acknowledge the reality of the situation in which they find themselves, they have a golden opportunity to seize victory from the jaws of disaster – to add a prestigious and lucrative site to their portfolio and perform a considerable service to a vulnerable community at the same time. They’d be well advised give it serious consideration.
R&R’s choice
R&R and Imbiba have reached a critical point in their journey. Behind them is a £1.2m failure. Ahead of them is a fork in the road.
Along one path lies a lengthy uphill battle with the council planning department; vociferous opposition from a motivated, creative and battle-hardened community campaign; ongoing bad press; little chance of commercial success; and high costs in terms of both expenditure and reputation.
Along the other path lies collaboration with the community, likely council support and profits healthy enough to support the opening of another venue – a true launch for Project Paradise – within a year or so having road-tested the concept and secured a potential customer base.
Or, of course, they could follow the Breakfast Club’s example and back out altogether, leaving the freeholder Kicking Horse once again with an empty property. It’s a property that Kicking Horse gave up trying to sell.
And it’s a property that will remain vacant until they team up with a smart operator that recognises the sense in reopening the Black Cap as an LGBT+ pub and cabaret venue. Such an operator is surely out there – and will reasonably expect a better deal if they came in on the back of two collapsed deals, with the Breakfast Club and R&R.
But it would be a shame if things should come to that when a solution is within grasp that could work well for all parties.
It’s not a utopian solution – ideally the campaign would love to see all the money generated by the Black Cap ploughed back into the Cap itself – but it’s a practical way to work with an experienced operator to bring much-needed renovation to the site and reopen its doors as an LGBT+ pub and cabaret space once more.
According to their official literature, the Imbiba partners “have been working in London for 35 years and their extensive experience is evidenced by their superlative track record. One of the keys to their success has been their ability to marry the right concept to the right property and location.”
The choices they make over the coming days and weeks will determine whether this claim proves to be well-founded or disastrously misplaced.
