Work starts at the Front Door

We have started the project of improving the experience that visitors have as they enter the building.....from the front door up.

We are painting the front door with another colour, so that we stand out a bit more.

Dave has ripped out the whole of the entrance lobby to make it bigger. It will give a much better feel as one enters the newly painted front door.

Now we have the job of re-plastering and repainting. At the moment it all looks a bit of a mess, but soon we will have it looking great!

Gregor

Sent from my HTC

Posting Newsletters to Members

There will be a debate at tonight's AGM about mailing newsletter to members without email addresses.
Currently if we have no email address we post our quarterly newsletters to members. We send out 170 newsletters in this way. The cost of postage has gone up to 50p per newsletter and, when we have to get them printed commercially, it costs another 50p for the printing.
This, with the postage of mailing out a subscription reminder, means that we pay £4.50 for a £5 membership.
For memberships where there is an email address, there are no such costs.
Gregor

AGM Tomorrow; Thursday the 16th of May in the Pavilion Cafe at 7pm

Below is the Agenda for tomorrow's meeting.
. Opening remarks
. Presentation of the Accounts (Nick Whitehead)
. Presentation by The Grand Pavilion Ltd (Gregor Macgregor)
. Discussion and vote on posting Newsletters to members
. Election of Officers of the Group
. Election of Nominated Directors (Charles Beresford to preside for both these Items)
There will be cheese and wine afterwards.
Gregor

Responses from Businesses to HMHB Gig

I have now had around a dozen responses and thre are a few examples:
"On the night of Half Man Half Biscuit we had our busiest night for takeaways."
"We had three rooms let to concert guests on the Friday night and were
full. We even had some guests arriving with no accommodation as they
had been let down in their booking, we were able to put them up in our
newly acquired caravan!"
"We got people coming off the train straight into the pub on their way
to the Half Man Half Biscuit concert. It was a busy evening until the
concert started. We also had 3 rooms let to guests who were at the
concert. It was a really great evening."
".....there was a real buzz about the place."
"About two thirds of our residents for the accommodation side of our
business were attending the event and eating with us before they went
down to the Pavilion."
I think we shall have little difficulty in showing that the
refurbishment of the Grand Pavilion will benefit the local economy.
Gregor

Local Businesses Benefit from Pavilion Events

I have, over the last couple of weeks, been talking to Matlock Bath's businesses. I have been monitoring the effect on their business from the Half Man Half Biscuit concert.

The overall response has been "very good". One restaurant had their best Friday night for takeaways ever. One hotel had their best spring Friday ever: "we even had to open our restaurant early to meet demand" said the owner.

The more events like that we can organiser the better. One person saw no benefit however; he closed his chippy early that evening!

Gregor

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Pavilion Clean Up

Here is the pile of rubbish from last night's efforts!

This was hidden in nooks and crannies around the building!

Now we need another "dump run".

Gregor

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HLF Training Morning

Charles and I went to the Heritage Lottery Fund's training session this morning.

It will prove very useful now we have started the process of making our grant application.

One of the main points for us will be Conservation Deficit. This measures the gain in value in the building against the cost of development.

They will only fund the shortfall in gain vs the cost.

Gregor

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Matlock Bath or Skegness?

Yahoo are conducting a survey about which town is better.

The competition is not great as Skegness is so awful!

However, follow this link and vote for Matlock Bath and see what others say:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130506031309AAplP0t

 

Gregor

 

Ashover Carnivall/

A sunny day and not too much wind!

The carnival was lovely, a real community event. This is the new stand layout, with pictures of recent events. A good day for memberships 16 by 3.30.

Gregor

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Start of Heritage Bid

This meeting, with Charles, Laura, Nick, Lynn & Robin, markes the start of an enormous amount of work to apply for our big Heritage Lottery grant. Until August we will. Be busy getting our massive bid together. There are no less than 9 multi_part sections to the form, many requiring significant research. Which will keep us busy through the summer!

Gregor

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Pavilion Goes Up With a Bang

Wood from the Pavilion Clean Up went up with a bang today! It was the centrepiece of a Matlock Bath Party. When it was lit there was a massive bang. The lighter fuel exploded causing wood to be thrown into the air.

The fire brigade was called and reviewed the situation.

The party then progressed normally, but we had a lot to talk about!

Gregor

Sent from my HTC

New HTC One

I have just invested in an HTC One Phone, and it becomes so much easier to make posts to the Blog.

Before I had to take a photo, transfer it to the comuter, log on and then do my blog posting. Now I can do it directly from my phone.

A long time ago I bought a little keyboard and this helps be to avoid the "Fat Finger" problem!

So expect more posts.

Gregor

Sent from my HTC

Matlock Bath Bank Holiday Festival

A good event is occurring all weekend in Matlock Bath's Derwent Gardens.

The gardens are filled with stalls selling everything from jewellery to food!

There is music and entertainment. This is what brings people to Matlock Bath and keeps them here.

Let's hope this becomes a regular feature.

Gregor

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Grand Pavilion Planning Meeting

Over the weekend the trustees had a planning meeting to sort out our structure for the coming months and years.

Having taken on the lease, in the expectation that we would not be able to do much with the building, we have found that we can use it. We have now had two extended events in the building and are planning three more this year. We hope to have lots of events next year!

The structure, that we agreed18 months ago, cannot cope with this change and we need to re-organise ourselves to deal with the running of a living building! We are likely to have an overall management group that will oversee everything and then a series of smaller committees to oversee the individual tasks that need to be done.

As the days go by I will do further Blog postings with more details.

Gregor

N.Gregor Macgregor
Chairman, The Grand Pavilion Ltd

See our Progress: www.savethepavilion.co.uk &

Support out vision: www.thegrandpavilion.co.uk

 

Rolls Royce Helping the Grand Pavilion

Ten Rolls Royce executives are helping The Grand Pavilion to reach their goals. They are helping to formulate a plan that will get the Grand Pavilion used more, in the time before a full restoration is able to be started.

The ten picked the Grand Pavilion project from nearly a dozen different community projects. This is part of their management training course, which includes a community project as part of the curriculum. They are currently looking at the different revenue streams that the Grand Pavilion can gain. From this they will make recommendations as to what improvements to the building should be prioritised first, to bring the greatest benefits to the overall project.

This is a massive help to us as they are devoting time and energy to a subject that will help to make our project successful in the short term. In deciding what we can and can’t do, with the building now, we will be able to look at potential bookings as a real opportunity. Currently we are just doing what is necessary to meet the next booking’s requirement. We then have to hope that we will get another similar booking, that will help to justify what we have spent.

Five of the group (pictured) came over to talk to us and they now have a clear idea of what we are looking for. We have a good idea of how they can help us.” Gregor continued; “we hope that this relationship will build and that they will gain, as much as we already have, from our relationship together.

Gregor

N.Gregor Macgregor
Chairman, The Grand Pavilion Ltd

See our Progress: www.savethepavilion.co.uk &

Support out vision: www.thegrandpavilion.co.uk