New regime at The Kremlin
Owner of the Kremlin complex, Anthea Wilson, director of Anthology NI, is pictured with Daniel Allen, general manager at the iconic Belfast venue.
Probably the best known of Northern Ireland’s small crop of gay venues, The Kremlin in Belfast has built a loyal following in the 15 years since its founders, Andre Graham and Seamus Sweeney first opened the doors.
Catering to a niche market meant that to some extent, the venue was immune from the worst of the leaner years, yet a reinvigorated economy and a gradual shift in prevailing attitudes has meant that The Kremlin, like everyone else, has had to work harder in recent years to preserve its share of the market.
Responsibility for ensuring that it managed this successfully has fallen to Anthea Wilson since she arrived to manage the premises on behalf of its owners seven years ago. In 2009, Anthea formed Anthology NI and took on The Kremlin’s lease from Andre and Seamus. And earlier this year, Anthology invested £3m to take sole ownership of the venue.
“We just felt that the time was right to do this,” Anthea told LCN recently. “We will have large numbers of students coming into this area in a few years’ time when the University of Ulster re-locates its Jordanstown campus to Cathedral Quarter. We also felt that it made good economic sense, now is a good time to buy in this market.”
That £3m investment buys Anthology a suite of venues – The Kremlin itself along with the Union Street bar, The Green Room cocktail lounge upstairs and The Shoe Factory cabaret club next door.
But Anthea hasn’t allowed the burden of sole responsibility to deflect her from an aggressive programme of ongoing improvement and modernisation across all the venues. At Christmas, just before the deal to purchase the business went through, a £150,000 programme of improvements was completed in Union Street, incorporating a thoroughly modern make-over for the popular venue and a brand new cocktail lounge in the old upstairs bar.
“The Green Room is a high-end cocktail bar for over 21s only,” said Anthea. “It’s aimed at older customers generally. A lot of people like to come up here and sit, have some food, perhaps enjoy a cocktail and stay on for the night away from the hustle and bustle of the bar downstairs.”
In the main nightclub, work is presently ongoing to create a much roomier and more comfortable smoking area for customers. The new facilities will be ready in time for Christmas. This is the first refurbishment work that’s been undertaken in The Kremlin since 2008, but Andrea indicated that another new project is also currently in the planning stages:
“We can’t say much about it at present but it will be a new bar and a totally new concept, it will be something that’s in quite high demand with a good outdoor area and it should be open by Easter next year,” she added.
The new development will bring the total tally of bars in The Kremlin complex to eight.
But the growth plans going forward don’t rely solely on a revamped offering. Anthea sees considerable potential in The Kremlin for private hire, particularly with The Green Room cocktail lounge:
“The Green Room is only open at weekends, but it’s a good space and we want to make the best of it,” she explained. “It’s ideal to hire out for things like 40th birthdays and anniversary parties and we find that more and more people are looking for this sort of private space to hire for all sorts of things. It’s more value for money, they can all be together and we can take care of things like a DJ and food for them.”
In fact, when it comes to boosting business, Anthea believes that The Kremlin’s reputation as an iconic venue for the LGBT community has been a big factor in growing trade:
“It’s helped us a lot because we have a niche market,” she explained. “There are lots of bars to choose from these days, but people still want to go where the crowd is going. We’ve managed to retain all our old customers in recent years and our numbers are growing, everyone wants to go to the busy places on a night out.
“I also think that nowadays, almost everyone feels comfortable about going to a gay bar. During the recession, a lot of premises cut their entertainment way back, but we increased ours, so if there’s a crowd to get, then we get it
Anthea also drew attention to the issue of safety and said that she felt The Kremlin’s excellent reputation in that regard had also helped boost its popularity:
“We get virtually no trouble in here, thanks to our strict door policy and really well behaved clientele,” she added.
Anthea does concede, however, that any lessening of the old prejudices can be a double-edged sword – it’s also much more acceptable now for members of the LGBT community to visit other, straight venues:
“We have a lot of competition now as a result and so we know we have to keep our focus on service levels and entertainment,” she said. “We try to provide a complete package, consistency is important. We want people to be able to come here for a drink, have some food, stay on for a cocktail or go to The Kremlin. We don’t want them going elsewhere.”
For that reason, The Kremlin has built a reputation for bringing big names acts to the province from around the world, regularly paying anything from £7,000 to £10,000 per night to get performers onto the stage in Belfast, but Anthea says that the investment is worth it:
“For the last six months, our business is up 10 per cent on last year, that’s above expectation and we are very happy with that,” she added. “Halloween this year was up 15 per cent on last year, which was great for us. We had a full house by 11pm on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings.”
Going forward, Anthea indicated that the focus will be on the Christmas programme. Promoting the private hire aspect of the venue will also be a key priority and she is excited about the new bar that’s scheduled for opening at Easter:
“Over and above that, we will be concentrating on our entertainment programme, we like to keep changing that all the time, making sure its fresh and different. That’s where we’ve built a large part of our reputation in the past and that’s not going to change now,” she added.
