Entertainment group Urbium has shut its £3m Tiger Tiger site on Broad Street in Birmingham, citing the surrounding “downmarket area” as one of the main contributory factors of the closure.

The 2,000-capacity bar and restaurant site, on Birmingham’s golden mile strip of entertainment venues, was opened in September 2000. However, according to Urbium, the site had not developed into the type of venue it believed would extend the core values of the Tiger Tiger brand and “mistakes” were made with the site.

Broad Street has also reached near saturation point with the amount of new bar, restaurant and club venues in the years since the opening of Tiger Tiger.

Urbium still own the leasehold of the Broad Street site and have been working with local businessmen and entrepreneurs to create two new, separate sites, which are currently due to open at the beginning of October 2003.

The two new sites will be an 800-capacity ground-floor restaurant/bar called Apt and a basement nightclub entitled Polaris, which will hold 1200 at full capacity.

Urbium’s presence in the city will also continue courtesy of its two other Birmingham sites – 52 Degrees North and Digress.

Managing director of Urbium, Robert Cohen, remains ebullient about Tiger Tiger’s future. He said: “We tried hard with the Birmingham Tiger Tiger for three years but we admit we chose the wrong concept for that location.

“It is a widely held belief that the strip on Broad Street has become downmarket and we felt that we couldn’t take the upmarket brand values of Tiger Tiger forward, so we shut the site. However, the seven other Tiger Tiger sites are going great guns and we’re very happy with them. So we may have lost the battle but we’re certainly winning the war.” Details: www.urbium.com