GREENOCK

ABOVE & BEYOND

VENUES, DECEMBER 2006, COMMENTS

Johnny Benning and business partner Tiko Vyas have put together a small but perfectly formed two-tier venue in the Stewart Centre shoping complex in the heart of Greenock, a large shipping town outside of Glasgow.

His first venue, Benning has harboured dreams of undertaking his own venture since his humble entry into the leisure industry as a teenage pot washer for an upmarket restuarant in Kent. Originally from London, Benning relocated to Greenock to be near his uncle’s business, and, with one eye trained on the leisure circuit, bought a local off-licence, In Spirits, a venture that would eventually give him the financial capacity to partner with Vyas for their first operation. Above and Beyond is the result, an enclave of Glasgow’s quality exported to Greenock, whose catchment area includes various suburbs made wealthy by the area’s recent history of computer chip manufacture, and a local marketplace of young professionals working at the local IBM, Royal Bank of Scotland and T-Mobile call centres.

The venue is split operationally between a restaurant and evening bar upstairs (Above) and a dark underground club (Beyond) below. Designed by Harris Khan of Glasgow’s HK Designs, the club has been given a dual identity, with the upstairs restaurant featuring snow-white furnishings right down to the specially painted and ceiling recessed Mach CS8 speakers, and lit by airy windows, table candles and pin spots. Downstairs the club has been given a dark interior, finished in matt black and dark mirrored surfaces, with interior-lit box tables dotted around the 180 capacity space.

“A lot of bars seem to look all the same colour - various shades of leathery brown,” says Benning. “Our starting point for the club was the name, Beyond, to show people that we were beyond any normal nightclub. So we have the heavenly thing upstairs and the dark thing going on downstairs. It’s great, I’ve been focused on doing something like this ever since I started.”

The realisation of this dream hasn’t been easy. With a projected 12 week fit out the venue in fact took 12 months to create, as designer, builders and operators tinkered over their venue format. In the end, Benning says their struggle with the venue was ultimately a satisfying experience.

“We had a real hassle getting the venue, which I discovered after months of trawling the net. The broker was reluctant to sell to me, because he thought I didn’t have the experience. But once they saw I was deadly serious they were convinced I could operate as well as any corporate. Then there were some building delays while we perfected the layout and designs of the venue. At times I would be going in there and be pulling down walls myself, and wheel-barrowing the bricks out by hand. It was pretty hands-on.”

As the venue developed, Benning and Vyas scoured the London trade shows for inspiration for their food and drinks offer, and for furniture and bar materials that would give their operation a vital point of distinction.

“We were insisting on the best of everything. Looking at the finest pastries and cakes you can get for our café - and Illy coffee, which is just about the best you can buy. We wanted all the blinging stuff upstairs, like really beautiful tub seating from Morris furniture, at about £600 a chair. Even our cups and saucers cost me a grand for a set of only 60. That’s about £17 a cup. I nearly cry every time we drop one.”

This attention to detail is evident throughout the venue, especially in the downstairs VIP room, which consists of several square metres of bedding, on to which guests clamber, having put their footwear in a specially provided cubbyhole. Table service is offered to those lucky enough to be allowed in, and Benning is determined to be one of the first UK owners of a Play Station 3, to be installed in the VIP room and played through one of the club’s 42” plasmas.

Both operators wanted the sound of the club to match these levels of quality. Benning and Vyas approached Michael Jordan of Nightclub Sound & Light, at Edinburgh’s SLTN hospitality show, with a specific set of requirements for their venue.

Upstairs, the sound would need to cater for both a restaurant and bar operation, while downstairs the operators were prepared to invest in a serious lighting and sound install.

“They wanted me to recreate a really hi-fi sound in the Above restaurant,” explains Jordan, “so that as you walk around the venue, it still sounds as if you were listening to the music through headphones. In what is a small area we used a dense installation of 16 ceiling recessed Mac CS8s to provide the level of clarity and support the guys wanted.”

Also installed are two Martin Mach CW110 sub bass units, while the whole system has been powered by Yamaha’s P3500 amps and the sound configured by a Cloud XC166 Zone mixer.

Downstairs, the kit has been selected to impress, and features an installation of Martin Professional’s venerated, but sadly discontinued, Mach range. The bulk sound is provided by Mach CN7 and CW15 bass speakers powered through Yamaha P3500 and P2500 amps. Mach Ci8 infill speakers have been used in the seating areas, while two further Mach CS8 ceiling speakers have been deployed in the VIP room.

The sleek dark gloss of Beyond is also broken up with a stunning bank of 15 colour-changing Neo LED panels, illuminated tables and a series of light spots, requested by the operators to resemble a night sky. The entertainment lighting consists of Martin MiniMac profiles and four Mania EFX500 units over the dance floor, controlled with a Martin Lightjockey.

“I’m proud of our first venue, in spite of some of the headaches invovled,” says Benning. “People come here and feel like kings, and that’s rare for a Greenock venue. But most of all it’s everything that I hoped my first venue would be: cool, comfortable and upmarket. NSAL did a great job, and we’ve asked them to come back and do our next club: something bigger and better, and hopefully a little easier to put together.”

Words: Leo Batchelor

Images: Jim Ellam

From: December 2006 Issue

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