Nightlife Cocktail bar hopes to cause a stir at former restaurant
AN Art Deco-era building in Bristol city centre that has been largely empty for more than a decade has its first tenant for years – a cocktail bar.
The London Cocktail Club, which already has a bar on Clifton Triangle, is expanding to a second establishment, and has taken up the ground floor and basement of Gilbert House in Bristol’s Old City area.
The cocktail club owners have signed a 20-year lease on about a quarter of the total area of the building, which was constructed in 1933 on Corn Street.
Gilbert House was built by renowned architect Sir Giles Gilbert, who created what was at the time the most modern and elegant office space in what was then the heart of Bristol’s commercial and shopping centre.
But over the years, the building fell into disrepair. Its last tenant on the ground floor appears to have been a Mexican restaurant in the noughties, but the building was boarded up for most of the 2010s, as Corn Street gradually changed from a commercial hub with banks and offices into an area full of bars and restaurants around it.
The building’s owner IV Real Estate decided to completely refurbish the Art Deco building with new air conditioning, windows, a communal roof terrace and revamped courtyard, and now, after being up for let for years, the investment has paid off with the first tenant there for years.
IV Real Estate also owns next door 41 Corn Street, and leases that to Flight Club, which opened this summer as a fairground-themed ‘social darts’ bar.
“This is another exciting operator to join Flight Club in our adjacent building at 41 Corn Street and adds to the vibrant food and drink offering on the street,” said Alex Jordan, from IV Real Estate.
The second London Cocktail Club should be up and running in Gilbert House by the end of October.
London Cocktail Club opened its first bar in London in 2008, before going on to add another eight across the capital.
In 2018, the chain opened its first bar outside its founding city here in Bristol, on the Clifton Triangle.
The brand is managed by friends JJ Goodman and James ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, who first fell in love with Bristol after appearing on BBC’s The Restaurant back in 2009.
LCC described itself as “a bar that parties like the best of them, and mixes the world’s greatest drinks to perfection”.
Information on its website adds: “[It’s] a place where you can throw your hands in the air, whilst singing to ACDC, sipping on the perfect dry Martini.”