By BEN TRUSLOVE
Published on Thursday 12 January 2012 09:19
A well-known Peterborough city centre bar and restaurant is set to get a facelift thanks to quarter-of-a-million pound investment.
Rinaldo Fasulo, owner of the Sessions House in Thorpe Road, is hoping to capitalise on the future redevelopment of the former Peterborough District Hospital site.
He is looking to modernise the inside of the eatery, bringing it into the 21st Century.
It will see the restaurant close for several months but reopen ready for the new development on the old hospital site.
Mr Fasulo said: “It’s going to be quiet this year and we lost about 30 per cent of trade when the hospital shut.
“It’s a lovely building but I want to modernise it inside.
“I’ve had the designers in this week to see what can be done. I would like a glass house or something similar on the back.
“It makes sense to close it this year so we can get it ready for when the hospital site is redeveloped.
“That’s 25 acres of land which is probably going to be mostly houses.
“It will be good for Peterborough and really good for the Sessions House.
“But it’s going to take a long time and careful work because it is a listed building.”
Mr Fasulo bought the Sessions House in 2002 for more than £2 million following on from his food and nightclub empire across the city and further afield.
But the carvery restaurant took a hit when the new Peterborough City Hospital opened in November 2010.
The 25-acre district hospital site is currently being marketed to developers, either as a whole or potentially parceled up.
But a clause entered by Peterborough City Council rules it must be residential.
Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust owns the site but has not revealed a price tag, though the Evening Telegraph has previously reported that a £16 million offer from Bellway Homes was rejected before it was put on the open market.
A spokeswoman for the trust said: “We are expecting the first rounds of bids to be in by early February and after that the short-listing process can begin.
“Best and final bids will be collated in April and the completion of the sale is expected in May this year.”
Mr Fasulo thinks work on the site would begin quickly after the sale went through.
Sessions House history
THE Sessions House was built in 1842 and was the visible front of Peterborough Prison.
The Victorians who built it based on the Pentonville Prison model which was started two years earlier.
It closed as a prison only 36 years later but remained a police headquarters.
In 1931 the police moved out but the magistrates stayed until the 1980s, when it became a bar.
Comments
There are 10 comments to this article
Some say that your time on this earth can be judged by how you treat its fellow inhabitants. Of course if you decide to kill them and eat them, when you don’t need to in order to survive, then that’s a clear marker of your spiritual development so far. Would anyone like to ask what “spiritual development” means?
Nice to see he’s putting the money to good use that he’s earned in the GoCompare adverts.
Fasulo. You are simply a crook.
I agree with all except @1.
There is absolutely no chance that I or my friends and family will ever give this man anymore of our “hard earned money” so he can spend whatever he likes open as many places as he likes I for one hope they fail. With him for once losing money not the people who use the premises he runs.
The Fire Brigage should certainly have alarms fitted at the station to ensure that they know whether the alarms are set when any place that he owns is closed. Also have a light that comes on at the police station as well when he opens the doors and one that shows RED rings a bell if it hasn’t been set when he leaves.With modern ways it should be possible. Boycott any of his venues and see what happens he may then realise that people in this City do not trust him.
This man should be made to pay back the hundreds of pounds that he owe;s my 90 year old parents for his broadway theater ticket scam before he is allowed to spend a quarter of a million on a restaurant that i and many people i know would never set foot in.
What a disgrace.
like many others i will avoid anything this character has anything to do with.
Glad to see the money the conned out of me at the Broadway being put to good use!! Also @1 if you don’t like the food don’t go there. Simple!!
better keep check on the fire alarms and insurance and if anybody has paid a big deposit up front for a party as you never know this could be related to the broadway scenario!!??
Don’t forget the burglar fire alarm Rinaldo.
This must be good news, and really in time expansion would make this a more loved venue for everyone. More vegetarian food would also help. Not everyone likes carverys. Why not serve ‘Hospital food’ – good and health?
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.