Illuminati? Vulture capitalist? The man who evicted the Leadmill wants to leave the drama behind

It’s 11pm on a Friday night — exactly an hour since Electric Studios, the venue that replaced the legendary Leadmill, opened its doors for the very first time — and a respectable crowd has already gathered on the dance floor. There’s five more hours left before the night ends and revellers still getting into the swing of things bop their heads as a young DJ called Harriet Jaxxon plays on what was once the Leadmill’s main stage. Next to me, a man high on the intoxicating rhythms of dance music — and possibly something else — struts back and forth in a small space at the back of the crowd. Upstairs, in the women’s bathroom, a girl who has been caught short plaintively calls for someone to pass some toilet paper under her cubicle door.

Which is to say, the long-awaited opening of Electric Studios, the event that the Save the Leadmill campaign once insisted would “kickstart a race to the bottom of a corporate barrel” for this city’s nightlife, is in every way a classic clubnight. I went to hundreds, if not thousands, of nights like this as a student. If I was here with friends — rather than on my own and stone-cold sober — I could imagine having a decent time, although I’m not a big enough fan of D&B to have been willing to pay £15.60 for an early-bird ticket. (A final release ticket would have set me back £20.20.)

So far, the response to Electric Studio’s first offering to Sheffield seems very positive. “Amazing night,” reads one five-star review on the ticket sales website Skiddle. On X, another attendee writes: “Fucking love it. Finally summat decent from Electric Studios.”

Finally indeed. Depending on how you slice it, Friday’s party was an event that took seven months, four years or an entire decade to come to fruition. It’s been seven months since the venue known as The Leadmill finally quit the former flour mill on Leadmill Road, although not before stripping out everything they could, including the doors and half of the frieze above the front door. It’s been four years since Dominic Madden, the owner of Electric Studios and the Leadmill’s former landlord, told the venue he would not be renewing their lease, kicking off a years-long legal battle over whether he should be allowed to run his own venue in the building. And it’s been a full decade since Madden bought the building for £600,000, after it failed to sell at auction twice. At the time of the sale, The Leadmill Holdings Ltd — a company owned by Leadmill owner Phil Mills — had net assets in excess of £1.8 million, meaning the venue could theoretically have purchased its own home. For whatever reason, it did not. 

When it was launched in 2023, the Save the Leadmill campaign attracted a huge swell of public support, while painting a very dim picture of Dominic Madden. More than 46,000 people signed a petition calling on the government to suspend the section of the Landlord and Tenant Act being used to evict The Leadmill Ltd (they declined to do so). In September of that year, a crowd of supporters gathered outside Sheffield town hall, as the council considered whether to offer Madden a license for the venue he one day hoped to run, urging them to refuse. At the meeting, Leadmill supporter Matthew Renshaw described Madden as a “vulture capitalist” who posed “a credible threat to the area”. (The council, unconvinced, granted the licence.)

When we meet the day before Electric Studios’ opening night, Madden is keen to put all the acrimony behind him.