A WAR of words has broken out in Belfast over the purchase of the site of a former theatre, cinema and bingo hall. The Grand Opera House Trust had applied for substantial National Lottery funding in order to buy the New Vic building, which stands adjacent to it. Opera House director Derek Nicholls and his trustees were proposing to turn the old Royal Hippodrome site into a centre for the performing arts, incorporating studio space facilities for local independent theatre companies, hospitality suite and bistro. Their bid was finally pipped at the post when property developers Ewart PLC upped the ante by £50,000.

A disappointed Nicholls promptly put out a press release in which he blamed the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (the distributor of the National Lottery Arts Fund) for failing to respond in time to the raising of the rival bid. We approached the Arts Council with a request to be allowed to increase our bid (of £1 million) and to dispense with a number of conditions which would have held us up. They were unable to respond fast enough to put us ahead of Ewart in the bidding", he stated.

The Arts Council has hit back angrily, pointing out that, despite the size of the application and the tardiness of its submission, it took just six weeks for the Opera House to be awarded £689,250. But a month later, the Council received the Opera House's demand that that it be allowed to increase its bid and that all conditions attached to the funding be dropped. An answer was demanded within 24 hours and it simply was not possible, at such short notice, to convene a meeting to discuss or radically alter the earlier decision," said the Arts Council's chief executive Brian Ferran. "We would fervently hope, however, that Ewart can be persuaded to incorporate some of the theatre's initial proposals in its plans and we are encouraged that negotiations to the at effect do appear to be taking place between its chief executive and Mr. Nicholls."