‘Warm and friendly’ meeting but community bid has deadlines to meet

Representatives of Friends of Hastings Pier (FoHP) had what they describe as a “warm and positive” meeting with the administrators handling the business affairs of the pier but they concede that, “time is not on our side”.

Jess Steele and Adam Wide met Adam Stephens of Smith and Williamson to talk about the plans FoHP have for the pier and to discuss the progress the group is making towards raising the finance administrators have told them they need to have in place to show they can continue to run the pier while development goes ahead to create a viable business for the future.

As of this morning a Crowd Funding project has raised just £57,195 of the £500,000 target set. Donations are climbing at a rate of around £2,000 per day. If the Crowd Funding scheme is to be successful that needs to rise to over £26,000 per day to reach the target by its deadline in just over two weeks time.

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A stunning overhead shot of Hastings Pier courtesy of Mike Thomas.

Ms Steele remains confident however: “We hope to see some larger contributions coming into the Crowdfunder in the next ten days, as is common with crowd-funding, but it’s essential that we get the individual and organisation donations up as high as possible so we reach the target.”

 

FoHP has not only developed a comprehensive business plan to support its bid to acquire Hastings Pier and to retain it in community ownership, it has also put together a detailed proposal for the kind of attractions that would run on the new pier and also a ‘transition plan’ outlining how it would get from where the pier is today to a stage where it could be a financially viable and self-sustaining business.

Ms Steele says: “We won’t have a CEO, instead we will continue to rely on the excellent Paul Denne as finance and general manager with Adam stepping in as creative director as part of an extremely experienced team of experts including Alex de Rijke of dRMM (the architects of the pier). They will support the staff and volunteer team on the ground as described in the business plan. We are fully aware of the need to keep the pier open and transform the offer even as we develop and implement Phase 2.”

 

Read FoHP’s business plan

Pier Business Plan

Creative Content – click below to see Adam Wide’s exciting plans for the transformation of Hastings Pier.

Hastings PIer – The Vision

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