Bitcoin entrepreneur’s arts venue denied alcohol licence as neighbours claim owners ‘can’t be trusted’

A cryptocurrency whiz has been denied a permanent licence to serve alcohol at his arts venue after losing the trust of neighbours following a series of complaints about the impact of its late-night events.

Overlock Arts, based in a former textiles factory on Belsham Street, advertises itself as a “versatile, uniquely stylish and exciting” arts and community space, but angry residents at a recent Hackney Council licensing committee accused the venue of running a noisy club “behind the veneer of arts and culture”.

An unusually crowded committee room heard complaints and received petitions in opposition to the venue serving booze from residents of Belsham Street and Chatham Place, as well as Trelawney Estate opposite.

Resident Tom Andrews said: “There is nothing Overlock Arts can do to mitigate against our grounds for objection.

“We have experienced consistently excessive noise levels, people leaving the premises shouting and urinating in the street, multiple occasions of rubbish being left in the street, and the list goes on. On these issues alone, they have clearly shown they can’t run events peacefully, safely or responsibly.

“Overlock are working behind arts and culture’s veneer, but as we have seen they have marketed and run events in the day and the night which have caused us troubles as a community, and in my opinion they can’t be trusted.”

Andrews added that during Overlock’s events they had been forced to close their windows and wear earplugs, with a permanent licence threatening their “peaceful enjoyment of the property”.

Another neighbour speaking at the meeting, who lived directly above the venue, spoke of their experience with smoke effects employed by the venue rising directly through their floorboards and filling their home with smoke.

Sixty-two letters of complaint were received in response to Overlock’s application, along with two petitions and representations from the police and licensing authority, with one saying the opening filled them with “dread”.

One neighbour said that their front door step was at one point designated as Overlock Arts’ smoking area and “cordoned off”.

Another resident said: “There is a disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality of Overlock Arts’ proposed strategy.

“I have stood at 2.30am in the morning outside of my building, standing amongst a group of smokers, with a soundsystem banging and the building vibrating, and Overlock have looked into my eyes and told me they are not running a club night.

“They talk of a community-focused space, but they feel no hesitation about sending me threats of legal action if I don’t desist from my objections to their activities.”

Overlock has stated that the club nights which had been previously booked and run at their venue had not been directly operated by themselves.

Councillors at the meeting quizzed Overlock partner Laurenzo Mefsut, founder of tech company The New Athens.

Mefsut, in an invitation to contentious celebrity academic Jordan Peterson to join The New Athens’ board of trustees, stated that he conceived the idea of an “art asset-backed cryptocurrency” in 2016, and formed ArtChain in the same year, an online platform which uses bitcoin to generate certificates of authenticity.

Mefsut said: “We are partnered with Overlock Arts, and have been operating in London and New York since 2015. Now we are hoping to find a new home in Hackney.

“On that basis in 2016 we ran a tech accelerator down the road in Bishopsgate, and we are building a similar tech community around Overlock, hosting tech start-ups in an open-plan environment in the daytime.

“We are going to be providing art studio space and tuition which will be free of charge to local artists and residents who wish to participate. On the tech front, we are commencing a series of lectures on tech, bringing together the blockchain industry with interested members of the public.”

Mefsut added that, whilst he accepted Overlock had not got off “on the right foot”, the late-running club nights themselves had only been used as a means to an end in order to support Overlock’s operation and would not be the venue’s focus, which would instead be used for other events including exhibitions, lectures and tech accelerators.

However, Cllr Peter Snell (Lab, Dalston) said: “When people ask for advice from us about how to get a licence, we tell them to start lowkey, don’t upset the neighbours and establish a track record. That doesn’t seem to have happened here.

“You’ve clearly caused upset to both our officers, to the police and to the neighbours. I find it difficult we can safely give a licence out on a load of vague promises.

“The fact that you’ve got an underfunded operation, meaning you need to do things which break our licensing objectives in order to break even, is not a very good argument to bring to this committee.

“We’re not convinced that these premises are suitable for licensed use, because of their nature and their location in a residential area. We feel there has been a demonstrably poor management record.”

On further questioning from Cllr Snell on its proposed capacity of 200 people, it was revealed that no fire risk assessment had to date been carried out on the venue.

The police, as well as the council’s licensing and environmental health department all opposed the application to serve alcohol.

Councillors said they were “appalled” to hear that at one particular club night at which enforcement officers were called in to ask for the volume to be lowered that the music was turned back up again ten minutes later.

When it became clear to Overlock that its case was not being received positively, the venue attempted to seek an adjournment of the decision, but this was not accepted.

Cllr Gilbert Smyth (Lab, Stoke Newington) added: “On your mission statement, your very first aim is to offer diverse productions contributing positively to the local culture of the borough.

“So far you have not demonstrated that you have been contributing positively because all of these people here are really upset.

“You obviously do plan to have noisy activities, because you’re planning to install a noise limiter.”

Cllr Smyth went on to ask how many of the events Overlock intended to stage would be noisy, Mefsut responded simply: “Very few.”