The Ivy House

[Sue]

Number of shares required @?100/share (minimum investment 2 shares=?200, maximum 200 shares=?20,000:

ETA: At the lower end, fairly small risk I would have said, considering the abysmal interest rates going elsewhere at the moment.

I'd rather put a few hundred quid into a community venture such as this and risk losing the lot, rather than putting it into an ISA or whatever run by an organisation paying its employees millions of pounds in bonuses.

Slight exaggeration, but you get the point.

[DJKillaQueen]

Yeah but who is going to invest ?20k without seeing a detailed cashflow projection?

[DJKillaQueen]

I do see your point Sue and I agree that the Ivy House is definitely one of those rare things where a couple of hundred quid spent with no expected return is money well spent.

I just worry that the prospectus remit is trying to do too many things, be all things to all people. I know from my own experience of turning the Tenants Hall around how difficult a task that can be.

I also think that the expected ?8500 weekly takings might be difficult to achieve week on week (and I have good reason for thinking that based on knowledge of what the typical bar spend is for some of the types of events the Ivy House will host). BUT obviously I don't know the detail of the expected overheads to know if a lower level of takings will meet overheads.

There also have been issues in the past with residents and noise, some of whose homes back directly onto the building. These are not going to be easy things to overcome.

But the place has to open first so yes, I'd say that the more people that buy shares the better, and if it works, it might just be the model that saves the pub industry from complete decimation, to be replicated accross Britain, the world, and the Universe :)

[Sue]

Well I shall be buying shares, albeit at the lower end of the scale.

I shall look at the available information as I would with any investment, but this place is going to be what the local community makes it. A "detailed cashflow projection" is neither here nor there to me at this stage.

Clearly the business plan was sufficiently impressive to get the project this far, and that's good enough for me.

I don't think you can compare Tenants Hall with The Ivy House. Tenants Hall was turning away regular potential sell-out/very well attended gigs for a start, unless it was just ours. If you have a venue which has to be mainly restricted to a particular group of people, tenants in that case I believe we were told, then of course you will have issues.

[DJKillaQueen]

Just what gigs are you talking about? You know nothing about the Tenants Hall or it's management team.

You enquired about using the hall but made it clear that if I was involved in the hall you didn't want to proceed. I'll even publish your emails to Mick if you like. At no point did the Tenants Hall or it's management team tell you that your gigs were not welcome so why lie about that? You didn't even get that far in talking to the team.

For your information we do not turn any bookings away except if the required date is already booked. And use of the hall has never been restricted to tenants either (most bookings are from the local community and not tenants). Many people from this forum have booked the hall. We've also had many sucessful comedy and music nights. You don't know anything about it so why make incorrect statements?

Now I agree there are differences to the Ivy House. The Ivy House is a commercial premise and will have to pay taxes (we don't) and will have overheads like staffing costs (whereas as the Tenants Hall is staffed by volunteers)..but that apart, the aspects of managing a profitable business are exactly the same. A detailed cashflow may not matter to you but the majority of serious investors may only do so if they can make a return and they will want to see that. I don't know what the big deal is with that?

[Sue]

I don't particularly want to address this here, but as you have given a lot of detail:

We tried for weeks to get a response from the Tenants Hall re holding our gigs there. We had been told by somebody who used the hall that you were no longer involved with it, otherwise we would not have even considered it. You are correct that we asked Mick if you were still involved, but we had no response from him or anybody else, and in fact we had no idea whether he had received any of our communications to him.

If I recall correctly we phoned, emailed and eventually went down there at a time the hall was supposed to be open (it wasn't), all with no response.

Eventually you emailed Nygel saying something along the lines of tenants having priority. You are welcome to print all our emails regarding the hire of the Tenants Hall, provided of course you also print yours to Nygel.

I doubt anybody else is interested though.

Please stop calling me a liar on this forum. I never knowingly lie and I am sick of your numerous posts saying that I do.

Now can we get back to the Ivy House, thanks.

ETA: I have found the email. It says "The Tenants Hall is managed by the TRA for the benefit of Rye Hill Residents (around 450 households) where I live."

We took this to mean that tenants took priority for ticket sales. When we asked somebody else who had hired the hall about this, he confirmed that that was his understanding as well.

However as you told Nygel that you could not foresee your involvement with the hall ceasing, it was all a bit academic as we had no wish to hire it in that case.

[DulwichFox]

Putting any amount of Money into any project is risky...

Putting Money into a venture where you have no say (control) is seriously risky.

Limiting the Max to ?20,000 would seem to indicate at that level any investor would not have

a controlling interest.

I have been looking for suitable investment oppotunities locally for the last couple of years.

Even if that meant buying a couple of properties just to rent out..

The returns would be better than most schemes and I would have total control.

I have been here before and was very lucky with my tenants..

Perhaps I'm just a bit too old to for all this..

But need to do something with the way interest rates are at the moment..

I do not think this Scheme (Ivy House) is for me.. I cannot invest

I'm Out

DulwichFox

[Sue]

I see investment in this venture as not just as a matter of finance, but as an investment in the local community.

Maybe that's why I'm not rich :))

Not rich in the sense of having loads of money, anyway .....

[DJKillaQueen]

Sue my email to Nyge did not say tenants had priority...it said as follows....

'Thank you for the recent emails regarding hire of the Tenants Hall for Goose is Out bookings.

I can confirm that I am still an executive officer of Rye Hill Tenants Association (as I have been for the past four years). The Tenants Hall is managed by the TRA for the benefit of Rye Hill Residents (around 450 households) where I live. The management committee, including myself are all volunteers and I can forsee no time whilst I'm resident at Rye Hill where my involvement will cease.'

Nowhere does that email say tenants have priority for tickets bookings or anything else. The detail was to explain to you my involvement and the nature of my involvement and why that would not be changing anytime in the future. That you read it as something else is your mistake. And the person you spoke too can't have had much knowldege either because they would have known that.

So please retract your accusation that we TURN away gigs/ bookings, because that IS a lie. YOU chose not to proceed.

Mick is a volunteer and his time is limited as is all of ours. There were 14 days between your request to PTOO for contact details and my response to your partner. Given that Mick was away for one of those weeks I think there's nothing really to read into that.

Back to the Ivy House.....the website says there is a cashflow spreadsheet on there, which was my original reason for posting.....because I can't find it.

Totally agree with Fox,

[h1981]

Cashflow spreadsheet is now up on the Ivy House website! (sorry about that)

[Sue]

I am sorry for the disruption to this thread, which I did not intend.

I was trying to make a point about the difference in nature between what I understood was a hall mainly used to benefit a specific group of people, ie tenants on the immediately adjacent estate, and a public house which would be used to benefit the whole of the local community.

For obvious reasons I am now sorry that I tried to make this point.

This was what I said above in the post to which DJKQ has taken exception:

I don't think you can compare Tenants Hall with The Ivy House. Tenants Hall was turning away regular potential sell-out/very well attended gigs for a start, unless it was just ours. If you have a venue which has to be mainly restricted to a particular group of people, tenants in that case I believe we were told, then of course you will have issues.

The issue of our not wanting to hold gigs at Tenants Hall if DJKQ was involved is somewhat of a red herring.

There is no dispute about what DJKQ said in her email to Nygel, which is the only communication we ever received - very belatedly - in response to our enquiry about holding gigs there.

Part of that email said:

The Tenants Hall is managed by the TRA for the benefit of Rye Hill Residents (around 450 households) where I live.

As I have also said above, we took this to mean that those Rye Hill residents took precedence for tickets. That understanding was borne out when we asked other people who had hired Tenants Hall about it.

If both their and our understanding was wrong, and if it is not the case that there are restrictions on who tickets can be sold to, then yes I apologise for misunderstanding.

I also apologise if my wording was misinterpreted - in retrospect perhaps describing it as "turning away gigs" was wrong. All I can say is that the impression that we had after receiving the email was that we could not have held events there even had DJKQ not been involved, and then after having talked to others, we thought that our usual audience would have had to take second place for tickets after the residents of the estate.

ETA: So perhaps what I should have said was that Tenants Hall was "making it difficult for people with an established audience to hold gigs there", not "turning away gigs."

Now please can we return to the subject of the thread.

Also edited to remove part of a sentence omitted from a cut and paste.

[DJKillaQueen]

Sue, whilst I appreciate the post I am just going to correct one thing.

You say....

'The issue of our not wanting to hold gigs at Tenants Hall if DJKQ was involved is somewhat of a red herring.'

But you wrote this in your email to Mick......

'However I had been told that ******(me) was no longer involved with the running of Tenants Hall, but ****** (comedy) has just sent me an email which seems to imply that she is.

Could you tell me whether she is, as if she is I don't want to take this any further.'

(I can publish the whole email)

My email to Nyge was a response to that. It is perfectly clear that you had no interest in pursuing your enquiry if I were involved in the Hall (and I do not understand why you are claiming otherwise). This is also why Mick didn't reply right away becuase from YOUR OWN WORDS you were never going to take it any further.

I also find it odd that anyone connected to the hall (via hiring or anything else) told you that tickets couldn't be sold to non tenants of the estate etc, because this has NEVER BEEN THE CASE. We'd had PTOO there for the best part of a year.....under no ticket sale/ tenant mandate (which kind of blows your comment that the Tenants Hall makes it difficult for established promotoers to hold gigs there). What is the case though is that the half the people running the hall had to go when I became involved, because of financial irregularities exposed by my audit. One of those people lived above the Ivy House at the time, a coincidence maybe?

We have a very good reputation with our community and customers. It's taken me five years of my free time to bring that about (and to bring the Hall into healthy profit). That is the only reason why I mentioned it, to qualify my view of the prospectus and its figures for the Ivy House (because balancing corporate and community interest is at the core of both models). You've taken it to somewhere else, with a couple of mistruths (which I think I've adaquately demonstrated to be as such), in an effort, it seems, to suggest that the Tenants Hall is badly or selectively managed, because you decided not to pursue a booking enquiry (for your own personal reasons)?!?

Whereas you could have instead, discussed the finer detail of the Ivy House prospectus...something you seem not to want to engage in discussion about beyond 'how great it all is'.

[ontheRye]

Having rec'd the good news email re the purchase of the Ivy House, I saw this thread thinking it would be more of the same...........methinks both venues, facilities, location s etc etc have their merits but is this really what this thread should be used for?

[Sue]

ontheRye Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

is this really what this thread should

> be used for?

No you are right, it isn't, and I'm sorry for my part in that.

Hopefully it will either return to its intended purpose or (probably preferably) somebody will start a new thread.

ETA: I see the posts you were probably referring to have been deleted, so maybe it is back on track.

[nat777]

Your comment inspires me to invest. I may not make any money but what a fantastic opportunity for our community :)

Sue Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I see investment in this venture as not just as a

> matter of finance, but as an investment in the

> local community.

>

> Maybe that's why I'm not rich :))

>

> Not rich in the sense of having loads of money,

> anyway .....

[honeybee79]

Hi everyone

If you have any questions about buying community shares in the Ivy House then please feel free to contact me.

The cash flow should now be up on the website!

In relation to "returns" on investment, we hope that there will a "social dividend" - ie, it's an investment in the community and will help make the neighbourhood more interesting and raise the profile of Nunhead. However, we are also permitted to pay interest on investments after a period of time and this will allow for a modest financial return too.

In terms of risk, no investment is risk free and this is the same. However, a shareholder's liability in the event the worst case scenario unfolded, is limited to the value of his or her investment. In other words, if something did go badly wrong (and obviously we very much hope it won't!) then the most you stand to lose is your original investment.

The max. investment is ?20,000 and this limit is set by law.

Any other questions, please seek me out.

Finally - please go to our website and buy some shares! www.ivyhousenunhead.com

[Sue]

Is there a time limit on buying shares, or a capped total amount of money that can be invested (by all investors combined, I mean)?

[honeybee79]

Hi Sue

We have set a target of ?100,000 for the share issue, but this is a target not a cap. If we exceed it, then great. The offer closes in May 2013.

[annabel42]

See pages 24 and 25 today's Evening Standard about The Ivy House - "Drinkers use law to save their pub".

[Sue]

Thank you, honeybee79, I'm on the case.

Have just publicised it to over a thousand people in our newsletter :)

ETA: Is there an online Evening Standard article?

[DJKillaQueen]

I can scan the evening standard article and post it. Am I allowed to do that? or is there a copyright issue in doing so?

[DJKillaQueen]

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/drinkers-at-the--ivy-house-use-law-to-save-their-pub-8540278.html