Restaurant plan Barge bought by council for £1.4m set to be moved
ALARGE boat bought by Bristol City Council for £1.4million, because it was in the way of a restaurant development, is finally going to be moved “in the next few weeks”.
The barge, called the Ebenhaezer, has been moored on Welsh Back next to the Redcliffe Bascule Bridge for years, and was privately owned until Bristol City Council spent £1.4million of taxpayers’ money on it.
The council has an agreement in place with a Worcestershire-based developer to turn the last remaining unrestored dockside warehouses into three restaurants.
After a 12-year planning saga, Cordwell Developments wants to repair and restore the building known as the O&M Shed, on the west side of the floating harbour, and turn the largely derelict building into three restaurants.
But moored up against the side of that building is the 137ft-long barge the Ebenhaezer, which was being lived in as a houseboat. Its resident fought council plans to move the boat, and the developers Cordwell said they wouldn’t go ahead with the regeneration of the buildings if the boat was still there.
In a controversial move last summer, Bristol City Council’s cabinet voted to end the impasse by spending more than a million pounds to buy the boat, repair it and move it to another location, before eventually selling it off.
Officers told council leaders that it was the most cost-effective way to solve the problem – otherwise the developers would pull out of the O&M Shed deal, and the council would be left with a hefty bill to repair that building anyway.
In 2018, a last-ditch campaign was started by a coalition of campaigners from Countering Colston, the Bristol Radical History Society and local residents in Welsh Back, for the council to drop the restaurant developers and instead turn the O&M Shed building into a museum or visitors’ centre commemorating Bristol’s involvement in the history of the transatlantic slave trade and the abolition movement.
From left, Mark Steeds from the Bristol Radical History Group with Cllr Cleo Lake and Dr Joanna Burch-Brown of University of Bristol. Mr Steeds and others from the Welsh Back Association and the Bristol Radical History Group were campaigning for a museum on Bristol’s role in slavery at O&M Shed
Dave Betts That Abolition Shed campaign gained thousands of signatures on petitions, but the council ploughed on with the deal to turn the building into three restaurants.
The following summer, the proposal to spend £1.4 million of council taxpayers’ money to move a boat caused a political storm. Opposition councillors called in the decision to spend the money, but the decision stood and the council went ahead and bought the boat earlier this year.
Residents living around Bathurst Basin on the other side of the Floating Harbour said they would fight plans from the council to move the boat to their part of the waterway.
And since then, the boat has remained where it is, although the woman living there has moved out. The O&M Shed remains with serious structural issues, and no work has been undertaken to repair it.
But now, repair work to the Ebenhaezer is nearing completion ahead of the boat being moved so work can begin on the building.
A council spokesperson told the Post’s website Bristol Live that sites up Welsh Back nearer Bristol Bridge were being considered as a new home for the huge barge.
The deal between Bristol City Council and Cordwell Developments means the developers are responsible for the cost of repairing and restoring the O&M Shed building, even though the council will remain the building’s owner, with Cordwell leasing the building from the council.