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Boizot: What's going on at the Great Northern Hotel?
A VALUABLE statue which formed the centrepiece of an historic city hotel's grounds for more than a decade is facing an uncertain future after being removed during building work.
A VALUABLE statue which formed the centrepiece of an historic city hotel's grounds for more than a decade is facing an uncertain future after being removed during building work.The 40,000 bronze sculpture of jazz legend Duke Ellington was brought to Peterborough's Great Northern Hotel in 1998 by music lover and entrepreneur Peter Boizot, the hotel's former owner.
In the years that followed the statue has maintained an unlikely association with the city the US bandleader never visited – despite calls from its creator to move it from Peterborough to London.
But since the hotel in Station Approach was sold to new owners in April, bulldozers have moved in to reduce much of the garden to rubble and tear down one of its walls – apparently to extend the hotel's car park.
The disappearance of the statue has prompted Mr Boizot, who still jointly owns it with a trust consisting of a number of fellow jazz lovers, to raise concerns about its whereabouts.
He said: "I believe the Duke Ellington statue may have been put into storage, but I would very much like to know where, because it belongs to the trust, not to the hotel.
"The first I knew about it was when I heard they had knocked a hole in the wall and were doing work on the garden. I would have liked to have been consulted at least before they removed it."
The Great Northern was originally intended only as a temporary home for the statue, which depicts "The Duke" leaning on a grand piano, snapping his fingers and tapping his feet.
It was originally cast in 1998 for the Soho Jazz Festival, which was established by Pizza Express founder and jazz enthusiast Mr Boizot.
He had hoped to erect it outside his Pizza Express restaurant in London's Soho Square, but was refused planning permission by Westminster City Council, so brought it to Peterborough instead.
Four years later, sculptor Nicholas Dimbleby – the brother of broadcasters David and Jonathan – called for it to be returned to the capital, claiming Duke Ellington had "nothing to do with Peterborough".
Mr Boizot reluctantly placed the Great Northern on the market earlier this year, and it was sold for more than 3 million in April to a company fronted by former Peterborough United striker Lee Power.
Mr Power outlined an ambitious scheme to convert the 159-year-old building into an upmarket "boutique" hotel.
But while the work currently under way in the hotel grounds appear to be the first stage in the promised renovation, no one from Mr Power's company, Cre8, or from the Great Northern has shed any light on what is taking place, despite repeated calls from The Evening Telegraph.
Peterborough Civic Society chairman Peter Lee said: "The civic society is shocked to see that one of the first acts of the new owners of the Great Northern Hotel has been to destroy the historic hotel garden that dated back to the 1850s and replace it with a car park extension.
"We are baffled how this fits with Lee Power's idea of an upmarket boutique hotel."
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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