Yo-Talo (Tampere, Finland)
Ylioppilastalo (also known as Yo-Talo), street address Kauppakatu 10, is a building located in the Tammerkoski district of Tampere, Finland. Suomen Yhdyspankki (the Union Bank of Finland) commissioned Professor Gustaf Nyström (1856-1917), one of the last representatives of the Neo-Renaissance style Finland, to design an office building for the bank. Nyström had studied in Vienna, where he adopted local nuances of the Art Nouveau style, which was called Jugendstil in Austria and Germany. The house was completed in 1901. The decorative and imaginative facade has features from both the Neo-Renaissance and early Viennese Art Nouveau. The building is now protected on architectural, cultural-historical and landscape grounds.
After its original owner, the building was called Suomen Yhdyspankin talo, House of the Union Bank of Finland. There was an impressive bank hall at street level and a bank vault in the basement. Upstairs there were two luxury apartments for the bank managers.
The Nils Idman embezzlement case
The Union Bank building of Kauppakatu was also the scene of the largest embezzlement in the Nordic countries, which was revealed in 1912. It was then found out that Nils Idman (1858-1944), the Assistant Director of the Tampere branch of Suomen Yhdyspankki from 1885 and its Director from 1890 to 1912, had embezzled 9–10 million Finnish marks over the course of ten years. The amount was equivalent to nine percent of the budget of the Grand Duchy of Finland at the time.
The branch headed by Idman had a deficit of millions in the treasury and several promissory notes had been forged and loans had been granted with non-existent collateral. Idman apparently spent the money he embezzled on speculation, but he also spent a lot of money on art purchases. To the Hatanpää Manor, owned by the Idman family, he also built an expensive Neo-Gothic Idman Villa, said to have cost half the price of the Tampere Cathedral.
Nils Idman's brother Fredrik “Fedi” Idman got into financial difficulties due to his guarantee commitments and was forced to sell the Hatanpää Manor to the City of Tampere in 1913.
The act affected other local business leaders and bank managers as well. For example, the CEO of the Pohjoismaiden Osakepankki (Nordic Stock Band) resigned and Albert Snellman, the manager of its Tampere branch, committed suicide a couple of days after Idman's arrest.
In June 1913, the Tampere Court of Appeals sentenced Idman to ten years in prison, and this was further extended to 15 years in the Senate's proceedings. In court, Idman explained that he only acted as a philanthropist who wanted to help borrowers in trouble and donate money to charity. He also explained that he acted alone and absolutely denied that he had hidden the money or transferred it abroad. The fact that the Russian-born prosecutor Alexey Hosianov suspected Idman of financially supporting the activities of activists could have influenced the harshness of Idman's sentence in the Senate. However, this was not proven in court.
Nils Idman ended up spending only seven years in the Penitentiary of Helsinki, as the sentence was shortened, thanks to the Imperial proclamation and mass amnesty issued in honour of the Romanov Family’s 300-year rule.
Finland had already gained independence from Russia when Nils Idman was released from prison in 1920 and then returned to Tampere, where he worked for the manufacturer Heikki Liljeroos as an accountant and for Rafael Haarla's company as a number inspector.
City of Tampere buys the property
When the Union Bank moved to more spacious premises on the other side of Kauppakatu in 1938, the City of Tampere bought the property. Among other things, a tax office and a maintenance office were placed there.
In 1960, Helsinki’s Yhteiskunnallinen Korkeakoulu (School of Social Sciences) had moved to Tampere. The name was changed to Tampere University in 1966. There was so much excitement about Tampere now being a university town that the City Council proposed handing over the premises at Kauppakatu 10 as a joint student hall for the Student Union. There were also some more practical reasons behind the decision, the building having become old-fashioned and impractical for the City's uses.
Tampere’s Student Union House originally had its premises in 1965 in the former house of Ruotsalainen Klubi (Swedish Club) of Pirkankatu. In September 1966 Tampere City Council had made a decision to rent the property at Kauppakatu 10 without management charge to the Tampere Student House Foundation. A promise was made to the Foundation that from January 1967 onwards, the student unions of Tampere University and Tampere University of Technology (and possibly other student unions, too) could have the property at their disposal for 25 years, at least.
With the official opening of Ylioppilastalo in February 1967, the building received its current name, when the Student Union moved into the premises, which housed also the student paper Aviisi.
In 1968, the restaurant Tiiliholvi ("Brickvault") was established to the building’s cellar level. In 1967, the Student Foundation had applied for Class A liquor licence for a restaurant called Civiskellari. However, the name was changed to Tiiliholvi even before the restaurant premises were completed a year later.
During the renovation and modernisation works, the floor of Tiiliholvi was dismantled and lowered, the whitewashed and plastered walls were cleaned and the exposed brick walls were varnished. The vestibule of the brick vault – the former bank vault – still has the original ceiling made of railway rails and a mosaic floor.
The very first cabinet of Tiiliholvi, called Pörssi (“Stock Exchange”), has the door of the original safe. During the renovations, the entrance from the street was constructed, leading directly through the vault.
Initially, Tiiliholvi was supposed to become a student restaurant. However, it didn't take long before it was found out the staff didn't want students in sweaters to drink beer in their fine dining restaurant. The student crowd didn’t exactly feel at home in these posh surroundings, either, so it was decided to extend the alcohol licence to the first floor of the building as well, thus giving birth to the venue as we now know it.
Juice Leskinen, Mikko Alatalo & Coitus Int. performing 'Odysseus' at Yo-Talo in 1974
In the 1970s, Yo-Talo became a popular rock club and discotheque. In 1970, Tapio Korjus, a student activist at the time and later the founder of Rockadillo Records, had started organising concert nights three times a week. Instead of some more traditional dance artists that had visited the venue earlier on, in a conservative restaurant setting with tableclothes and all, there were now contemporary rock bands such as Wigwam and The Matthews. Following that, the reputation of the place rose quickly among local musicians – such rising stars as Juice Leskinen and Mikko Alatalo were regular faces. It was the boom era of "Manserock", a slew of popular Finnish artists and bands hailing from Tampere, with Yo-Talo as the place to perform in front of the live audiences. Such scenesters as Waldemar Wallenius (also active in local music magazine Soundi) played records at Yo-Talo’s Diggiteekki. Also Tapio Korjus was spinning records as DJ Madman, as towards the end of the decade the student audience's musical tastes moved from such genres as progressive rock to punk, new wave and reggae.
Despite the venue's popularity, until the mid-1980s only the card-carrying students were allowed entrance to Yo-Talo, though there were always those who cheated their way in.
Due to financial difficulties, Tamy had to give up ownership of its Yo-Talo restaurants in 1978 (although in the 1990s, the Student Union became a restaurateur again). A restaurant chain called Aleksin Ravintolat Oy became the new owner of both Tiiliholvi and Yo-Talo.
By the early 1980s, the rapid urban construction in midtown Tampere posed a threat to the old building. In 1979, it was found out that the house, built on wooden stilts, gradually sank. Groundwater dropped when increasingly larger buildings were built on the soft soil. The wooden piles that supported the brick vault, which remained above the water table, rotted under the house. As the building's foundation moved, it also caused cracks to appear on the building's facade. During a period of six months in 1982, the wooden foundation was changed to concrete and the esteemed building seemingly doomed to destruction was saved.
In 1994, Timo Isomäki was recruited, through a newspaper ad, as the new Programme Manager of Ylioppilastalo, to replace Olli Kangas who had held the task since 1991. In the 1990s Yo-Talo’s bar area was extended, the new space called Pankki (“Bank”) serving also as a daytime café when the dancefloor area was closed.
As the older generations who had frequented Yo-Talo moved on, also the sounds heard in the place were changing. In the 1990s Yo-Talo was especially favoured by Tampere’s Britpop fans, with some Goth flavour there too; having Depeche Mode, The Cure and The Smiths as their holy trinity. There were the popular Saturday night discos such as Rhythm and Groove (also known as “Soul-Disko”) by DJ Pauli Kallio, with a more traditional soul music setting combined to some newer R&B (also the audience here seemed a bit older), then for the indie-dance fans there was Pop-Disko by Tero Alanko and Jani Järvinen, also Alternative Night by Henri Keto-Tokoi and Mikko Aaltonen. Furthermore, starting out during this era were such events as Beatformers, run with his friends by Riku Pentti, a.k.a. DJ Infekto, solely dedicated to drum and bass, breakbeat and hip hop. There was also a new weekend night disco, BigPop by Pentti and Sami Siltanen.
On a local scale, Yo-Talo is a mid-sized venue, with 400 audience members as its maximum capacity. This former bank hall has a stage for performers with the dancefloor in front of it, flanked by the tables, the space for dancers being colloquially known as the Horseshoe. On the left side of the stage, next to the doorway leading to the bar, was Yo-Talo’s own DJ booth for the disc jockeys playing before and after the bands, also Yo-Talo’s weekend discos. Later on, the booth was removed from this place and a new setting arranged for the disc jockeys.
Yo-Talo changing hands
Yo-Talo restaurant operations had been incorporated in 1997 when it started making a profit. According to Aviisi 4/2009, Tamy's capital in the limited liability company was FIM 90.000. The best dividends were received in the fiscal year 2002-2003, when they were 27.000 euros. Tamy was the main owner of the limited company Yo-Talo until it gave up its majority shareholding in 2008.
Aviisi wrote at the beginning of February 2009 that Tamy had sold most of their shares in Yo-Talo to a company owned by the restaurant's CEO, Timo Isomäki. According to the news story, before the transaction, Tamy owned 90 percent of Yo-Talo and Extra Large Music Timo Isomäki Oy 10 percent. After the deal, Tamy only had 15 percent, and Isomäki's share in the company increased to 65 percent. "Acting as a restaurateur is not our core mission. However, the Representative Council wanted to keep part of the ownership, because the Student Union and student associations organise events in the restaurant", Kati Rajala, then Tamy's Secretary General told Aviisi.
In addition, Yo-talo's Restaurant Manager Juha Kannisto became the new owner of the restaurant with a 20 percent share. The restaurant had produced two loss-making financial periods in a row, so no dividends have been paid to Tamy as the owner. The restaurant having been incorporated, it hadn’t produced a loss for Tamy, either, Aviisi wrote.
In 2013, the Student Union moved out of the building to new office premises, which were located closer to the University. The building thus returned to the possession of the City of Tampere.
Timo Isomäki sold off his share in 2014, and by early 2015, Yo-Talo’s business had changed hands. The new owners were the artist couple Petri Lairikko, an actor and stage director, and his wife Katariina Leino, a playwright behind several musicals. They had previously run Musiikkiteatteri Palatsi (Music Theatre Palace) in the former premises of Tampere’s old Kinopalatsi cinema, at the house of Tuulensuu in Hämeenkatu.
Aviisi interviewed the couple in February 2015, the news story telling that “The premises have been renovated while respecting the original. In addition to dressing rooms and office spaces, the upper floor has been converted into party rooms.” The couple planned to run their musical theatre on Yo-Talo’s stage that had been extended with additional space during the renovation. “Yo-Talo does not remain only for theatre use. Upstairs, there is a music theatre school, and there will be stand-up comedy during the weekends. The gigs will remain active, and the weekend club nights continue. After the theatre, the space quickly transforms into a place of social evenings”, it was declared in the story.
Perhaps it was the ghost of Nils Idman still haunting the premises; in any case, the local news in January 2017 told that Restaurant Yo-Talo had gone bankrupt, Petri Lairikko citing the previous summer’s festival as contributing to the financial losses that were estimated as 130.000 euros altogether.
Whatever the case, in February 2020, the District Court of Pirkanmaa sentenced Petri Lairikko to two years and one month of unconditional imprisonment for serious economic crimes, with a five-year business ban on business operations. Lairikko’s wife Katariina Leino was sentenced to four months of probation.
In addition, Lairikko was sentenced to more than 730,000 euros in compensation to the bankruptcy estates of Musiikkiteatteri Palatsi, Palatsiteatteri and Yo-talo in Tampere. The charges mainly concerned the financial transactions and accounting of Musiikkiteatteri Palatsi and Yo-Talo in Tampere between 2012 and 2017.
According to the Court's decision, Lairikko had transferred to himself or his close family Musiikkiteatteri Palatsi funds worth more than 200.000 euros, the accounting had been neglected and the money had gotten mixed up in the accounts of different companies. The crimes were gross dishonesty of the debtor and gross accounting crime.
The bankruptcy estate sold Yo-talo's business and movable property to Restamax, a restaurant industry group. In 2021, Yo-Talo had a new Programme Manager, Rowan Rafferty of NEM Agency, responsible for artist promotions. The City of Tampere sold the Ylioppilastalo property to the educational association Sasky in April 2022. The ownership of Yo-Talo's business has moved, as of 1 June 2024, to Aleksin Ravintolat, which is currently planning to restart Yo-Talo as a club, after the renovation of property.
Club Telex, Tampere
Kommentit
Lähetä kommentti