please empty your brain below

£50,000 - that's almost free, did he need to provide evidence that he could maintain it? (or perhaps used smoke and mirrors accounting to give the impression he could maintain it).

However you do get the impression that there was smoke and mirrors accounting to restore the pier in the first place, as it went under pretty quickly, but asking tough questions about how you pay the bills gets in the way of the vision.

You mention the lack of seats - but the lack of shade would be just as off putting.
Compare and contrast with the vibrant Folkestone Harbour Arm - admittedly not as difficult to maintain as a pier, but packed with colour, interest and fun.
Blimey. £11.4m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, plus community funds, and it seems bank borrowings too, from this news report.

Was the Hastings Pier Charity just a management company? Does it actually own the pier, or perhaps a lease, or was it just the operational side that went bust?

Difficult lt to tell from the public filings. It was formed as a company limited by guarantee, so some documents are available for free online from a Companies House, but it converted into an industrial and provident society in 2013, and the FCA charges for copies.

How on earth did it go into administration, just one year after reopening? Lack of planning? Or just income being much less than expected/hoped last year? Who were the main creditors? The bank? The register includes a charge in favour of the HLF. Was it them? But no chance of raising more funds from shareholders? Why not?

The administrators are not really very interested in long-term maintenance of the pier, just either rescuing the company as a going concern, or maximising the returns to creditors. Looks like they were just trying to save the business.

dg writes: Ten questions there, Andrew.
I think that's your record.

Your pic no.2 will surely have Bob Dylan salivating when he next gets out his paint-box and easel. What can we expect him to call it - 'Desolation Pier'? or, 'Lily, Rosemary and a lack of Arts'?
Should have thought about the Charities Commission, but not much there either.
Both the 'wooden tongue' and the pavilion's function room were covered when I visited this time last month with the local architecture school's Graduate Show - and very interesting (and busy) it was too.
It was livelier when I went on Saturday. The event space had a flea market (not much to my taste though) and both cafes were full. I rather liked the open space as space to breath and the lack of crowding was better than Brighton which looks crammed.
The 2nd photo from the top actually looks like a CGI representation..
127 years of open for business, then 19 years of constant buying high and selling low shortly afterwards
Seems to be the modern mode of business these days, - especially the transferring public assets into private hands which I'm sure it's to allow for some "creative" tax accounting.
Looks like I would burn to crisp there with a few minutes. No buildings means no shade.
I grew up near Hastings, and recall the pier 'back in the day' (late 80s/early 90s). Even then, it was slowly declining, a process hastened considerably after it was bought by an offshore owner (somewhat ironically for a pier).

I like what has been done with the 'new' pier, and I think there is a lot of love for it in Hastings. But DG's criticisms are all valid and well-observed; on an ordinary day, there is perhaps little reason to linger. If the pier's design and execution (on a tight budget) was a triumph, its operational model seems to have been somewhat ill-conceived.

Hopefully the new regime may help the pier flourish in future. But I fear there may be trouble ahead.
I think l should point out that Andrew is not me.
Must visit Hastings some time.
Not excited by that pier, surely there's a reason why piers are covered in money making visitor attractions and not left empty?

To me that top photo just looks a bit bleak. No shade (so too hot for many in summer), and windswept in winter...
Well, I hope someone is asking questions about how an asset that cost over £11m of (effectively) public money was sold for just £50k.

This seems to be yet another example of an expensive lottery funded tourist attraction going bust. Someone must have compiled a list of the various museums etc that have closed within a few years of opening.
Does sound like the group in charge simply didn't make money and didn't have a pot of money of their own to keep it going. The public money spent on the pier would only be to retain its existance for the future, not to indicate ownership madly enough. You would have thought that there would have been agreements on the funding to stop someone just taking it over without local entities (council or the fundraising groups) being able to put in a bid. But even they wouldn't have money for on-going development. So I guess the fact that this guy already owns one pier is a deciding factor. But madly low price, should at least have been a little over what the fundraisers were offering.
Closed 'for maintenance' in January.

Still closed.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/mar/24/end-of-pier-hastings-drmm-abid-gulzar-bust-closed










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