Management at a city centre music venue famous for hosting bands such as The Undertones, The Smiths, Nirvana, Oasis and the Ramones have been counting the cost of the longest closed period since it opened four decades ago.
But the team at Rock City, in Nottingham, says although the venue – which celebrated its 40th anniversary this week – might not be back to normal for some time, fans can have at least something to look forward to in 2021.
George Akins, who took over Rock City from his dad in 1994 when he was just 19, told NottinghamLive: “We’ve had to adapt here this year, just like we’ve done in the past for different reasons.
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“The pandemic is the longest the venue has been closed to live acts and when we closed the doors back in March, no one really knew what was going to happen.
“There wasn’t a lot of clarity and some of us didn’t think we would still be shut come December.
“The group that owns Rock City is DHP Family and we own about eight venues in total. It’s a big business and we see Rock City as the linchpin to it all in many ways.
“It has been pretty tough but the wonderful thing is that we are not in debt and have very few leaseholdings on our buildings. We own most of them.”
Following the initial lifting of lockdown restrictions in July, the venue reopened with seating arrangements in place and groups kept to no more than six.
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Music was a lot quieter than regular punters would have remembered and its smoking area was converted and enlarged to form a beer garden.
George, who is now 46 and lives in the city, said: “We were supported greatly with the furlough scheme and some culture grants from the Government.
“There’s been good support here that’s kept us afloat. But it’s been really difficult out there for a lot of businesses so we consider ourselves very fortunate that we were not worse off.
“When we reopened in July, we were selling out pretty much every night with our limited capacity which was really good to see.
“It was quite clear people were keen to get back in here.
“Now with the tier system it looks like we may still be shut a while but if they can get this vaccine rollout right then hopefully we can plan for reopening.
“It’s highly unlikely that we’ll have a grand reopening in place because of social distancing, so it won’t be like back to normal, but we can still organise events that people can look forward to.
“People need to get back to hugging and contact, it’s normal to do that. We can’t realistically think people won’t do that.”