It's bad news this morning for Irish music fans, particularly if you're living in Cork.
The city has lost a music venue in the form of The Kino on Washington Street, the former arthouse cinema that was converted into a gig venue after the cinema closed its doors in 2009. It had only been open for 8 months before the pandemic hit.
The venue's promoters The Good Room - aka Ed O'Leary and Joe Kelly - made the sad announcement this morning, revealing that financial pressures relating to Covid had forced them to make the tough decision.
The venue's imminent redevelopment into a cinema and student accommodation - something that had been on the cards since last summer - also meant that the process was expedited. The plan had been to stay open until the end of this summer, but that is now not possible with Level 5 restrictions - even though recent audience-less gigs had been livestreamed from the venue under their 'Kaught at the Kino' banner.
A statement on their Facebook page read: "Unfortunately we've made the difficult decision to close the Kino for good. We had come to a new agreement with the landlord recently to stay until the end of the summer. But due to the latest government extension of level 5 restrictions we feel that it will likely be June or July before the live performance sector is allowed to re-open.
It wasn’t feasible to continue paying substantial rent for the next several months in the hopes of maybe opening for a few weeks. Only to vacate shortly after in order for the building to be sold."
They added that they hoped to resume their 'Live from St. Luke's' gig series in the autumn in another venue TBA.
Let's hope it's not a pattern that we'll see repeated in venues across Ireland over the coming months.
