Historic Brighton music venue fears closure due to plans for flats

An application has been submitted to turn offices into flats next door to Alphabet which has been a music venue since the 1960s.

The venue, in Dyke Road, Brighton, said that it could be forced to close if flats are approved due to potential noise complaints.

Owner Will Howell started refurbishing the site 11 months ago and described the recent planning application at Norwood House next door as “really worrying”.

Norwood House is attached to the venue and some flats would overlook the venue's outdoor roof terrace at the back.

A gig by Islandman at the venue in November 2023 (Image: The Argus)

The 39-year-old told The Argus: “This application gives everyone a complete headache and compromises our ability to trade. It’s a big thing, we’re very conscientious of our neighbouring community and Brighton as a whole.

“The venue is a worthwhile cultural provision for Brighton. We feel building such a development next door will marginalise our ability to provide live music.

“This venue is my livelihood, it has taken me years to get to this point. There is a lot on the line for me personally and on a business sense. I have spent years getting funding for this.

“Taking on a listed building, you have a lot of responsibility to look after it. We have spent a lot of time ripping out years of rubbish, not very sympathetic work done to such a historic building.

“We have completely refurbished all the windows at the front, we got a cathedral glass company to make them in the way they were before. The previous owners knocked them out.

There are plans for six flats next to the venue (Image: The Argus)

“The building needed a lot of TLC, we have completely rewired it. We are concentrating on immaculate live sound and have worked on the acoustics.

“I know before they had quite a few noise complaints from across the road, so when designing the system I did it in mind that no sound would bother our neighbours.”

The planning application for Norwood House, 9 Dyke Road, has already received almost 100 objections.

They all call for the venue to be protected and said Brighton’s identity has been “slowly destroyed by the overdevelopment of housing”.

The application, which was submitted on December 22 by DTA Property Holdings Ltd,  plans to build six flats on the first, second and third floor of Norwood House.

The venue in 2014 when it was Club Twenty Four (Image: Terry Applin)

It comes after uproar at plans for an office block and holiday lets next door to the Prince Albert music pub in Trafalgar Street.

Councillors had concerns about the proposed four-storey block being overbearing and said the pub should be protected due to its popularity.

People can offer their views on Brighton and Hove City Council’s planning portal now. The consultation ends on Monday, February 5.

The venue first opened in 1969 as Sloopy’s Nitespot and Discotheque. It was also owned by former Albion player Steve Foster under the name Fozzie’s Club in the 1990s.

It has also traded as The Sanctuary, The Shrine, Club New York, and New Hero before closing in 2011. It reopened as Rialto Theatre in December 2014.

The building was designed and built in 1867 by architect George Somers Clarke and was a school for poor children. It became a Grade II listed building in July 1973.