Restaurant will aid victims of bombing
10:40am Thursday 24th July 2008
PROFITS from an exotic restaurant set to open in Worcester could help the child victims of suicide bombers, says an entrepreneur.
Planners agreed to allow plans for six luxury flats next to the Sauce Factory at the junction of London Road and Fort Royal Hill in Sidbury, Worcester.
Now owner Peter Styles hopes to open the restaurant at the former Sauce Factory as an Afghan/ Indian restaurant.
The profits would help people injured at the Indian Embassy bomb blast in Kabul.
The bomb killed 41 people and injured 141 people on July 7.
Mr Styles, aged 46, of Henwick Road, Worcester, said: “I was in Kabul on the Monday of the blast at the embassy. I came across the aftermath of that.
“It made me concentrate my mind on what is happening to the victims of these atrocities. There is nothing we can do for the dead, but we can do something for the injured and maimed.”
He hopes the fund will help with education and even go towards providing prosthetic limbs for injured school children.
Planners approved the development of the flats at Worcester Guildhall on Monday.
The application does not involve the demolition of the restaurant building – the flats would be built on a patio area and a toilet block would be demolished to make way for them.
However, Mr Styles is considering an application to demolish it and redevelop the site.
Mr Styles said he expected the restaurant could open “within weeks”, although he had yet to decide on a precise opening date or a name for it.
We reported in your Worcester News how the Sauce Factory ad closed on Sunday, July 6.
Mr Styles, who has property in Afghanistan and an Afghan wife, said he was happy that planners had approved the plans, two years after he first began to have them drawn up.
The new flats will have sedum, or moss, roofs to make them more environmentally friendly.
Mr Styles has not decided yet whether to rent or sell them once they are built.
Originally, English Heritage objected to the scheme, saying the development damaged views of Worcester Cathedral from London Road. But the plans have since been scaled down and a tower removed and English Heritage has since given its full approval.
The site also hosts a phone mast which has proved contentious in the past and will be removed.
The Sauce Factory was a pub in the 1980s, when it was known as the Fort Royal Inn.
Mr Styles then bought the property in December 2005 from pub company Pubfolio.