Fifty years after the Beatles pondered how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall, its new chief executive, Craig Hassall, has revealed his vision to dig a giant basement as an extra concert venue.
Hassall said he wanted to create an additional space at the west London venue, where the main arena seats 5,272.
“It does seem obvious when you look at the size of the arena and then the next venue we have is the Elgar Room, which has around 200 seats,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be good to have something in between that?”
He would like to be able to announce a start date in 2021, the year of the hall’s 150th anniversary. It would be the most significant development in its history since Prince Albert oversaw the purchase of land in South Kensington with profits from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to create the cultural quarter known as Albertopolis.
Hassall pointed out that the Albert Hall is already getting “the biggest basement in London”, a two-storey “Great Excavation” that will provide extra space for artists, crew and promoters by 2021. If it is not feasible also to build the new concert venue below the Hall, he said, it could be located elsewhere in Albertopolis.
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Its size will not be decided before the management have conducted research with their huge database of visitors. “It might be demand is for a bijou, 700-seat recital hall for early music and emerging rock and pop or maybe it is for a 2,500-seat concert hall, a sort of Royal Festival Hall-type thing,” Hassall said. “We just don’t know. It would be a mistake to just leap in and say make it a 1,000-seat concert hall, based on nothing.”
The venue’s plans come as so-called “iceberg” homes with deep basements for private cinemas, swimming pools and dancefloors, face planning restrictions in the neighbouring borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The Hall, however, is in the Westminster city council area, which permits basement developments on merit.
Hassall said the new venue would probably match the wide range of events staged in the main arena, which include not just the BBC Proms but also concerts, charity fundraisers and sports events.
This article has been amended