Grand gesture boosts Madeira Terrace crowdfunding
Brighton’s Grand Hotel has generously added their support to the city’s Madeira Terrace crowdfunding campaign. Their pledge along with the generosity of other Brighton businesses and individuals, brings the total raised to over £160,000 in just under six weeks.
The pledge follows on from a family fun day held on Madeira Drive when more people joined the campaign to save the famous structure on Brighton & Hove seafront.
Members of the public gave more than £1,400 through bucket collections, sales of merchandise and online pledges. Brighton Palace Pier sponsored the stalls and got the day off to a flying start with a contribution of £150.
Madeira Terrace is an 850m long stretch of 151 seafront arches on Madeira Drive in Brighton and thought to be the longest cast iron structure in Britain. The campaign aims to start the journey of bringing it back to full use – it has been closed to the public since 2012.
To make a pledge and find out more go to: www.savemadeiraterrace.org. Residents, visitors and businesses have registered more than 600 pledges so far. More are needed. The campaign has an ambitious target of £431,000 by 26 November. This will kick start the regeneration of Madeira Terrace and be used to bring at least three of the arches back into use.
More than a third of the total is now pledged, thanks to people’s generosity.
To complement the campaign, tourism businesses and volunteers have launched the Madeira Drive Project to help improve the appearance of Madeira Drive.
The family fun day event was part of that project and volunteers have been helping to clean up the area with the support of the council’s Cityclean staff.
Howard Barden, head of the council’s tourism arm VisitBrighton, said: “It’s great to see the pledges coming in with businesses and individuals showing their support for Madeira Terrace, which is part of our heritage and important for the future of the seafront that belongs to everyone.”
More information about Madeira Terrace