Greg Dyke, a billionaire former head of the BBC, has come under fire from neighbors for closing down a beloved neighborhood bar and letting it degenerate into a “blot on the landscape.”
A campaign to make Dyke’s now boarded-up Pickwick Inn a community asset has been started by incensed residents. There are now 170 signatures on it.
If the ruling was upheld, the community would have six weeks to submit an offer to the former BBC general manager and former FA chairman to purchase the property.
Devon’s St Ann’s Chapel rural pub has been down since January and boarded up since July. It is still on the market right now.
Residents are worried that the location may be purchased and transformed into a housing development, as occurred to another nearby bar, the Royal Oak, in 2013.
The South Hams District Council has been urged to declare the structure an asset of community importance and Bigbury Parish Council has started a petition to keep the pub open.
Over 170 individuals have signed the petition, which calls the shuttered bar “a blemish on the landscape rather than the significant communal endeavor that it previously was.”
It continues, “While there has been interest in saving the pub from a number of groups, the property owners have been less than helpful in their answers to any proposals.”
“The pub is going into decay, it’s a really sad state of things,” said councilman Stuart Watts.
The bar’s location is fantastic, and both residents and visitors praised it as a great spot to have a drink and pub fare. It is in a highly important region.
We don’t need additional housing unless it’s cheap housing. I’ve received 170 emails stating.
The bar is a crucial place for individuals to socialize, mingle, and have conversations. It goes beyond just grabbing a drink.
The petition’s popularity shows that there would undoubtedly be a clientele.
“We’re doing it step by step,” the choice about the communal asset must first be made.
The Dartmouth Hotel, Golf and Spa is one of 13 properties in Mr. Dyke’s portfolio at Vine Hotels, which is headed by him. He told the BBC that he purchased the Pickwick four years ago as an investment.
He said that the Pickwick closed in January as a result of the tenants’ unexpected departure.
The parish council had received an offer to buy the pub earlier this year, but there had been no reaction, according to Mr. Dyke.
He continued that there had been rent or purchase bids for the bar, but none had been “somewhere practical.”
I am aware of what pubs mean to a community, he continued.
The market is dreadful, but we don’t want it to be anything other than a bar.
No one was ready to pay the rent we were asking for or even close to it, despite the fact that we wanted to retain it as a tavern.