Owner Alparslan Bali pleads: Save Club Imperial from closure

Published: 12th November, 2010
by TERRY MESSENGER

A NIGHTCLUB owner is to make a last-ditch bid to revive his business – after it closed following repeated outbreaks of violence.

The boss of Club Imperial will plead with Islington Council on Monday to save the venue in Holloway.

Alparslan Bali will make his appeal in the face of fierce opposition from neighbours and police, who complain of noise, drunkenness, stabbings and mass brawls.

He shut the business in September after police said they wanted him to close every night at 1am, as opposed to 4am at weekends and 2am during the week.

He was in talks with police until, it was claimed, there was an outbreak of serious violence at the venue in Seven Sisters Road, the   tenth within a year.

Mr Bali said: “Our customers arrive after 1am in the main so if we have to shut that early, there’s no point – it’s like cutting my head off.”   

Islington Police submitted a formal application to the borough’s licensing committee to curb Club Imperial's hours, which will be considered on Monday.

“If the committee allow us the later hours, then we’ll reopen,” said Mr Bali, who closed down voluntarily pending an official decision.

Reopening the club would infuriate neighbours who have written angry letters of protest to the committee.

“Customers congregate in our street, making a noise, fighting among themselves, vomiting, urinating and causing a nuisance,” said one complainant.

The police produced a dossier outlining violent incidents at Club Imperial since October last year.

The report details:

• A mass brawl involving 60 people in the bar area.
• An attack by other revellers on a man ejected from the club. The victim lost so much blood that the front office at Holloway Police Station, where he was taken, had to be shut for cleaning.
• Head injuries inflicted on a customer outside with a pool ball in a sock.
• A fight involving 20 people in which a young man was stabbed in the head.

Police were in discussions about measures to curb the violence – including the use of CCTV – until September 11 when there were two further incidents.

A man was stabbed in the head with a butterfly knife and a couple, ejected for refusing to pay for drinks, punched a doorman, assaulted a police officer and racially abused a black woman PC.

Mr Bali said he would tell the committee he had done his utmost to stop violence in the area.

He said:  “It used to be 20 times worse than when I turned up.   There used to be drugs in the area, there used to be guns in the area. OK, I didn’t stop it altogether maybe. But I reduced it 95 per cent.

“The police should have worked with me, putting up cameras and so on. We could have made it work.”

He said that 26 people would lose their jobs if the committee’s decision goes against him. And he will go bankrupt after investing £200,000 in the venture, launched two years ago.

Before Mr Bali took over, the Club Imperial building housed the Red Rose Club, a comedy venue and Labour Party social club.