A real estate battle in London has pitted a number of musicians and celebrities against developers in a fight to preserve the historic George Tavern, a Stepney neighborhood concert venue that's been sitting there for nearly 600 years. Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs, Lianne La Havas and punk poet John Cooper Clarke have thrown their support behind the cause to prevent the closing of the building.
The threat against George Pub isn't new. Developers have been pushing for more than eight years to turn a next-door building into a six-flat residential building. Landlady Pauline Foster, a proponent of the pub, says that if flats were to go up, the number of noise complaints that would be generated by performances at the pub would cause the venue to close. She also believes that construction work would damage the pub, although developers argue this isn't the case.
The actual musical history behind the venue is relatively minimal. Nick Cave's band Grinderman shot part of its first music video there, but then again Pulp also shot its video for "Commn People" in the building that would now hold the new flats. Opposition to the new development is based more in the nature of the deed—the removal of live music venues for other commercial interests—plus the pub's lengthy residency in the neighborhood.
As someone who proposed to their wife during a concert at New York's historic Roseland Ballroom—another venue that's due to be closed during 2014 and be replaced by condominiums—we can sympathize with supporters of landmark venues.
An online petition to save the pub has more than 2,000 signatures as of publication, and can be found here.
