by pinballparlour » 12 Oct 2016, 11:19
As one of the owners of the Vintage Arcade I can confirm that we were required to vacate the Park following Duff and Phelps' invoking a clause in our contract that stated "the contract may be terminated if one or the other of the parties becomes insolvent.
This clause was clearly inserted to offer protection to a solvent party (ie in this case - us) to be able to rid itself of a contract with an insolvent company(ie in this case Sands). Duff and Phelps have utilised that to get rid of us following a series of disagreements over the Summer. It has nothing to do with financial viability, just Ben Wiles flexing his muscle behind the laws of insolvency that seem to give the administrators the right to do what the hell they want, with no one having any right over their actions.
Briefly, they asked us to move to the new part of the buildings when they came on stream, promising us that if we did the interconnecting doors would be opened to create a proper through path to our area "within 2 weeks" (their promise!!) It took all summer and cost us thousands in lost revenue, which we complained about. We had to make threatening noises to get them to even begin to do the necessary works. Then after finally getting this done (which resulted in our turnover rising by 120%) they told us we had to move everything to make way for the building of Screamland. We took exception to this but reluctantly agreed, re-located our machines as requested, and were issued with the notice to quit the day after, and given 7 days to vacate.
D & P said over the phone that "we didn't fit in with their vision of Dreamlands future, but wouldn't put it in writing when asked. Their official reason for booting us off was that they "couldn't meet with the obligations required under the terms of the contract". Total hogwash as all we had was an area otherwise unused, and a few power sockets. We supplied the machines, manning, change machine, maintenance. all Sands/D&P had to do was to count the takings and retain their share.
This is the same company that has already billed almost £250,000 up to July!!