Addendum: I just checked out Wytham’s website, and discovered they list six staff. Even if those people aren’t all full-time, several of them supervise teams of contractors. This greatly ups the amount of value the castle would need to provide to be worth the cost. AFAIK they’re not overstaffed relative to other venues, but you need higher utilization to break even.
Additionally, the founder (Owen Cotton-Barrat) has stepped back for reasons that seem merited (history of sexual harassment), but a nice aspect of having someone important and busy in charge was that he had a lot less to lose if it was shut down. The castle seems more likely to be self-perpetuating when the decisions are made by people with fewer outside options.
I still view this as fundamentally open phil’s problem to deal with, but it seemed good to give an update.
Addendum: I just checked out Wytham’s website, and discovered they list six staff. Even if those people aren’t all full-time, several of them supervise teams of contractors. This greatly ups the amount of value the castle would need to provide to be worth the cost. AFAIK they’re not overstaffed relative to other venues, but you need higher utilization to break even.
Additionally, the founder (Owen Cotton-Barrat) has stepped back for reasons that seem merited (history of sexual harassment), but a nice aspect of having someone important and busy in charge was that he had a lot less to lose if it was shut down. The castle seems more likely to be self-perpetuating when the decisions are made by people with fewer outside options.
I still view this as fundamentally open phil’s problem to deal with, but it seemed good to give an update.