Homeless restaurant seeks new horizons
Popular Paget restaurant Splendido is looking for a new home after being told they can no longer stay at Horizons Cottages.Yesterday owner Angelo Buglione said they had recently been told the Bermuda Hospital Board (BHB), who rent the majority of the property, are looking to rent more rooms and the restaurant would no longer be able to operate there. February 28 will be their final dinner service at their current location.“We are looking for some place new now,” he said. “I would like to keep my staff as everybody has worked really well together. It may mean they have to take a month vacation while we find a new place.“We have had hundreds of our customers call today to ask what is happening.”The restaurant won Bermudian Magazine’s Best of Bermuda award for most romantic dinner in 2010.Last year the BHB rented 40 rooms at Horizons Cottages for nurses while they renovate the nurses’ residence on the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital site. The renovations will increase the number of rooms, which the BHB says will be more cost effective.Yesterday, a spokeswoman said: “We are currently in commercially sensitive discussions with Horizon’s owners regarding the main building, which would be an addition to our current lease, in the interests of more cost-effectively centralising our staff residences in proximity to BHB. The terms of the agreement, which are not yet finalised, could restrict BHB’s use of the property to BHB purposes only.”The restaurant will remain open for dinner every evening until February 28 and people who have purchased gift vouchers have been advised to use tham as soon as possible.
