It's a tough time for pubs and some of this city's best are doing their very best just to stay afloat.
Problems like rising bills and prices and falling patronage makes it hard for boozers to keep their doors open. But one former Aigburth pub was forced to shut down for a far more dramatic reasons – and never reopened.
The Belgrave Hotel, on Bryanston Road in the St Michaels area of Aigburth, has remained closed since a gangland murder took place outside its front door in 2011.
An eye-catching red building, The Belgrave is boarded up and shabby looking these days – some locals have hoped for a long time that the building could reopen and serve the community, but there is little sign of that at present.
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Plans were actually approved back in 2018 for renovation work to be completed on the building, which would have seen it reopened as a pub – but with hotel rooms above, but no work has progressed since then. That planning permission has since run out, meaning that for now at least, this pub, with its difficult and dark history, will remain closed and unused.
Murder at The Belgrave
The Belgrave has remained closed since a ruthless gangland murder outside its doors in February 2011.
Bahman Faraji, 44, was shot in the face from point blank range after being lured outside the pub on Bryanston Road in the quiet St Michael's Hamlet.
Unaware of the danger, he stood waiting for a meeting when a man with a shotgun strolled up to him and fired it directly into his face.
It is believed Faraji – nicknamed Batman and with a reputation for “taxing” drug dealers – was killed over an alleged underworld fallout.
The hit was orchestrated by Jason Gabbana, who ordered drug dealer Simon Smart to make arrangements for the murder, eventually carried out by Dingle dad Edward Heffey.
Gabbana and Faraji were both members of Liverpool’s Iranian community and had known each other for a decade, since the victim arrived in England seeking asylum.
The jury were never given a firm reason why Gabbana would have wanted his former friend dead, but the prosecution suggested there was a fall-out between the two which led to Gabbana taking out a contract on Faraji's head.
In the trial which ended in March 2012, the three men were sentenced to life behind bars for plotting, arranging and carrying out the street execution of the Liverpool doorman.
Gabbana, then 29, was jailed for a minimum of 33 years; Heffey, then 41, for a minimum of 35 years; while Smart was branded “the major co-ordinator” by the judge and sent down for at least 31 years.
Perhaps one of the most astonishing details of the case was the part played by former Brookside actor Brian Regan, who acted as an unwitting getaway driver.
Regan, who played Terry Sullivan in the city-based soap for 14 years, was cleared of murder after a jury believed he was being used as a "pawn in a game he didn't even know he was playing."
On the night of Thursday, February 24, 2011, Regan was out delivering cocaine for a friend. He dropped off a £30 bag of the drug to Heffey, as he would do regularly, but on this occasion the Dingle man asked him for a lift.
The pair drove first up to a location in Vauxhall, where police believe the assassin collected the murder weapon, and then on to Aigburth.
Regan parked around the corner from the pub and Heffey wandered off out of sight, returning within a couple of minutes. The former soap star said his associate showed no signs of having carried out a gangland hit just 100 metres away.
Although cleared of murder, Regan was however jailed for four years and 10 months for lying to the police and because officers found a stash of cocaine in his home, being readied for sale.
Plans that never progressed
Back in November 2018, Liverpool Council's planning committee approved plans to revamp the beautiful building and turn it into a pub/restaurant and hotel.
The Belgrave is owned by Keith Haggis, who also owns the iconic Keith's Wine Bar on Lark Lane.
He was given permission to erect a single storey extension to the side and rear of the building and make a large number of improvements in and outside – including the creation of nine en-suite bedrooms in the upper floors.
Despite objections from all three ward councillors and some local people, the plans were approved at the committee.
But since then, no work appears to have progressed on the building, which remains boarded up today. The planning permission was granted on the condition that work should begin within three years – which means it expired in November 2021.
The ECHO has attempted to reach Mr Haggis to find out what his current plans are regarding The Belgrave, but he did not reply before publication.
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