Dear readers — In June last year, two Irish businessmen stepped through the doors of London’s opulent 22 Club, a private members club located on Grosvenor Square. The 22 describes itself as “a sanctuary where art, culture, and sophistication intertwine, inviting guests to indulge in the art of lingering”.
On this day though, lingering wasn’t on the agenda. The prominent hotelier Paddy McKillen Sr and the investor Tony O’Shea (not to be confused with the darts player) had come to talk business. More specially, they’d come to talk about a Grade II* listed building in Birmingham: the grand terracotta Methodist Central Hall.
Two years prior, McKillen Sr’s upstart son, Paddy McKillen Jr, had purchased the hall with big plans to restore it to its former glory. Unfortunately, the intervening years had seen little progress on that front. McKillen Jr’s finances had imploded, O’Shea claimed to be on his back for €12.5 million and crucially, the Methodist remained in a state of disrepair.
The meeting was not a success. McKillen Sr claimed he had no responsibility to resolve the dispute between his son and O’Shea, while O’Shea made it clear he had no intention of restoring the building himself. Since then (publicly, at least) no one has budged. The hall, which should be one of the jewels in Birmingham’s crown, remains empty and rotting. The council has no plans to intervene — simply telling The Dispatch they are “working closely with the owners” and “matters concerning security are ongoing”.
Brum in Brief
📖 Controversial plans to restructure Birmingham’s libraries will be decided by the City Council’s cabinet next Tuesday. The strategy, which has the backing of commissioners and officers, could see seven of the existing 35 community libraries taken over by partner organisations and one, in Spring Hill, permanently closed. Staff will be cut from a total of 148 to 110 and opening hours across the system will be reduced by 27.26 percent, if the plans are voted through.
🪩 Night Time Economy (NTE) bosses have laid down the gauntlet to West Midlands leaders to take further action to save the sector from economic collapse. Hot on the heels of London mayor Sadiq Khan’s announcement on Tuesday that the capital will establish a ‘Nightlife Task Force’ of experts to tackle the challenges faced by the NTE, some regional figures are calling for similar measures to be established here. Lyle Bignon, NTE Ambassador for Birmingham working on behalf of the Night Time Industries Association, said action from mayor Richard Parker and local councillors “is now long overdue” and further delay is “no longer acceptable”. Peter Connolly, who owns Nortons pub in Digbeth, said he wanted “a clear message, strategy, and ambition” from elected representatives.
📉 Birmingham City Council has been denied its request to raise council tax again in April by 9.99 percent. Instead, Westminster has allowed a 7.5 percent hike. Under current provisions, the Secretary of State for Local Government, Angela Rayner has only allowed councils with below-average council tax to significantly raise their receipts. The news comes alongside a 6.8 percent increase in spending power for LAs, outlined in Rayner’s Final Settlement.
🏚️ The Crooked House Pub in Staffordshire, which caught fire in an arson attack in 2023 (for which no suspects have yet been prosecuted) and then quickly demolished by its owners ATE Farms Ltd. South Staffordshire Council ordered ATE Farms to rebuild the structure in February 2024. On Monday, it was announced that an appeal hearing on the pub’s reconstruction has been scheduled for 11 March. Local campaigners have been pressuring the council and ATE Farms to rebuild the pub for three years, with historian Tony Jeffries wearing a large ‘Crooked House’ shaped hat.
👨🔬 Yesterday, a potential drug manufacturing lab was found by West Midlands Police in the railway arches near Aston station. The lab, located in Thimble Mill Lane, contained a large cache of chemicals, vats and other equipment. The police and fire service blocked off an area around Thimble Mill Lane and brought in a scientific advisor to investigate.
An Irish hospitality tycoon promised to transform one of Birmingham’s most important buildings — three years later, and it’s falling apart
I’m hoping to speak to Paddy McKillen Jr, in whose hands the fate of one of Birmingham’s finest buildings allegedly lies. I’m having little luck though, and perhaps this isn’t surprising. McKillen Jr, it transpires, is about to move to Los Angeles.
The reason I’m hoping to speak to him is the Methodist Central Hall. The Methodist isn’t the only old building lying empty in Birmingham, but it’s certainly one of the grandest — it’s three storeys and 90,000 sq feet of baroque terracotta, including the tall tower and entrance porch complete with carvings. And its fate is one of the most complicated to unravel.
Three years ago, McKillen Jr, then-wunderkind of Ireland’s hospitality sector revealed big plans to move into the UK market. His proposal was to transform the once stately hall in central Birmingham into a vast hotel, complete with a bar, restaurant and a nightclub to boot. Evidently, his scheme had the wow factor. The Birmingham Civic Society applauded “the impressive ambition of the applicant”; while Stephen Hartland from the Victorian Society tells me it was “the best proposal we had seen [for the building] so far.”
It felt, after several years empty, that the hall had found its perfect custodian. But then, nothing happened. The updates slowly ground to a halt, the weeds poking through the building's empty shell continued to grow and a crowd of rough sleepers gathered outside. Save a handful of angry tweets asking what was going on, everything seemed to go silent. What wasn’t widely known was that the hall’s fate had become entangled in a dispute between one of Ireland’s most successful businessmen and the man who stumped up the cash to his son to buy the building — that is, international hotelier Paddy McKillen Sr, and Tony O’Shea, a former medical supplies business owner and investor.
Moreover, it’s a dispute no one seems to want to shine much of a light on — all of The Dispatch’s attempts to contact both parties went unanswered.
