Dear Reader - Lonely battle to save Harrogate Theatre + no business is an island

It was an odd way to spend a Thursday lunchtime.

I must have chatted to Harrogate Theatre’s chief executive David Bown 30 or 40 times in the last ten years or so.

But he’s not usually in his running gear and we’re not usually speaking at a distance of two metres or more in the street outside the front doors of a theatre whose lights have gone out, temporarily it has to be hoped.

Since it closed in accordance with Government guidance on coronavirus nearly two months ago, David has walked its empty corridors, the last man standing in a deserted building.

Each day he checks this long-standing arts hub designed by renowned architect Frank Tugwell is okay - and monitors progress on the theatre’s Emergency Appeal.

From what he is shouting out to me across our safe divide, he’s finding it a strange experience having this splendid Victorian building all to himself.

One man alone in a rabbit warren of corridors and rooms where in the past the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Sir Ben Kingsley and David Bowie have all made their way to the main stage for their turn in the spotlight.

An oddity these days in how it is financed, before the lockdown Harrogate Theatre relied almost entirely on ticket sales from the public.

Now it needs the same public to support it more than ever if it is to raise its curtain after the lockdown ends.

So far, the figures for the theatre’s appeal are looking good; the bigger worry is when and how this Grade II listed building will be allowed to reopen and whether audiences will still have the pennies or confidence to return in force.

So there David Bown sits, waiting to be rescued like a modern-day Robinson Crusoe, praying the old world is still there to return to.

Harrogate MP warns 'it's not job done' yet as lockdown starts to ease

So I turned up at my allotted time and waited at an allotted distance to pick up the items I’d ordered four days before.

Nothing is quite straightforward under lockdown, not even getting a lovely pizza from Major Tom’s Social on The Ginnel off Parliament Street.

This popular bar, one of the original pioneers of Harrogate’s craft beer scene, only started this service recently.

It, like other local indies such as Weetons, William & Vics, The Fat Badger and Baltzersen’s, is doing what it can do to survive in the absence of customers.

News of the first stirrings from the Government of an easing of lockdown this week has been broadly welcomed by the town’s previously vibrant food and drink sector, though concern remains about one question.

How to square the need to let customers back in without risking letting the virus back in, too.

It’s the horns of a dilemma bigger, perhaps, than any faced by this country since the Second World War.

For if reopening the economy is about one thing only, it’s about footfall and footfall means numbers.

To further complicate matters, in the real world no business is an island.

The modern economy operates like an ecosystem built on an invisible chain of interdependency.

A partial, ultra-cautious reopening of the economy runs the risk of not really being a reopening at all.

Harrogate cafe to partially reopen this weekend

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