Chef quits £60m Covent Garden project

America's top chef is today reported to have walked out on an ambitious £60million Covent Garden project devised by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics to provide a private members' club for artists, musicians and film people.

Charlie Trotter, whose Chicago restaurant was named last year as "The Best Restaurant in the United States", has apparently dismissed plans to create a seven-storey club and hi-tech arts and media centre called The Hospital as "unprofessional".

Stewart's dream is to bring together people of talent from the worlds of music, film and art and give them the chance to work in an environment that allows them maximum creative freedom.

Earlier this year, the rock star enthused: "The Hospital won't just have great spaces - beautiful bars, a wonderful restaurant, all the usual social things - but also amazing technical facilities, so you can actually write a song and record it right there, or you can make a film and show it in the screening room."

But last autumn investors in the centre got cold feet after a three-year planning delay. Trotter, who has his own show on US television, Kitchen Sessions, became exasperated, according to a report in The Independent. His spokesman, Mark Signorio, said he had worked on the project for two years without pay. He added: "It was so unprofessional that we decided to walk away."

The latest blow to The Hospital comes at a time when Stewart's "artist-friendly" entertainment company is reported to have hit the rocks, with debts of £2.8 million. Artist Network was born a year ago amid claims that it had backing of more than £6 million for its aim of challenging the "corruption" of the media industries. But after the backing failed to materialise in sufficient quantities, Artist Network has been put into a company voluntary arrangement, a step short of administration.

Stewart's spokesman, Phil Savage, said: "It's ahead of its time and because of the state of the music business at the moment it's very hard to get funding."

Mr Savage insisted that in spite of the demise of Artist Network, the Hospital project, built in a derelict Victorian maternity hospital, was still going ahead. He said it would open as a working studio next month and the members' club and restaurant would open in February next year.