Pryzm will open its doors to nearly 1,000 more partygoers as part of a renovation which will see a new “Shoreditch inspired” bar open in the town centre in spring, the club’s operators announced.
The Deltic Group’s £2m investment will go towards the opening of a new venue Bar&Beyond and to increase the capacity of the nightclub by nearly 200 people.
Adrian Swain, the regional director of the Deltic Group, said: “Pryzm has already built a strong reputation for providing outstanding clubbing experiences, together with live music from headline acts. We have continued to work in partnership with the Council and the Police and are delighted to bring a totally new experience.”
The Deltic Group, the largest club and bar operators in the UK, have said that the new bar will feature street food, craft beers and cocktails in the early evenings.
The 770-capacity bar will then become a dancing venue that similarly to Pryzm, stays open until the early hours of the morning.
Josh Davies, a 21-year-old biomedical science student, said: “The development makes me so happy because I love Pryzm, it is the best club Kingston has to offer and it can only get better.”
Despite sharing an operator and being on the same site in Clarence Street, Przym and Bar&Beyond are expected to have different management teams.
Andrew Hunt, a 21-year-old mechanical engineering student, said: “I do not know why they are trying to make the bar like a Shroeditch one, Shoreditch is just full of annoying hipsters.”
Deltic had originally intended for both Pryzm and the new Bar&Beyond to have last entries at 2am but after a licensing sub-committee hearing with Kingston councillors in October, decided on a time of 1:30am instead.
The committee hearing also decided that Bar&Beyond will stop serving alcohol at 2am and an area where revellers can order taxis home will also be created in a move that councillors hope will prevent drinkers from overcrowding the space around the venue.
Swain said: “We are delighted with the outcome of the Licensing hearing, which we believe will reinvigorate Surrey’s night time economy.”
The decision to increase the capacity of the Pryzm nightclub comes just over two years after the council told the venue’s operators to reduce its number of clubbers to 1,800 in July 2016.
Earlier this year however, the nightclub Hippodrome, which was also owned by the Deltic Group and had a capacity of 2,500, was closed so the building could be made into homes and shops.
One former Kingston police officer said: “I think increasing the capacity by that much would lead to issues for the police who work around the club. The number of police officers on the street are reducing rapidly so I can only see that adding a further 1000 people into a small area on a Friday or Saturday night is going to cause potentially serious problems.
“I remember a couple of years ago, myself and a colleague were put on foot patrol around the area on a normal Saturday night. There were a few other uniformed officers around but after they made arrests or were diverted to calls elsewhere, it soon became apparent that it was just the 2 of us covering the whole area.”
The new bar and the Przym capacity increase will also allow for at least 50 more jobs to be created, the Deltic Group say.
The police officer said: “In my experience, the security team at Pryzm were probably the most efficient out the clubs in Kingston but there is only so many people and incidents they can deal with.”
Pryzm was formerly known as Oceana but was forced into a rebrand after 20-year-old was stabbed in the venue in October 2012.
Emma Farr
Balsam Maki
Denise Meriche