So soon for centre

Leon Schultz is happy with the progress being made on The Cube, which is scheduled to open this year. Picture: BLAIR THOMSON

WODONGA’S new entertainment centre is set to open before the end of the year.

The Cube is running to schedule and on budget with the building’s exterior set for completion within four to five weeks.

“It’s certainly coming along pretty well,” Wodonga Council acting director infrastructure and development Leon Schultz said.

“We’re looking at an official opening before the end of the calendar year and we hope to be having performances before the end of the year.

“It’s all starting to happen pretty quickly now.”

The building is set to receive a splash of colour with raspberry cladding to cover about 10 per cent of the exterior with the ceiling and beams currently being painted purple and black.

“The bulk of The Cube is in a translucent white material, the raspberry colour is just at the front of the cafe and it may form about 10 per cent of the building,” Mr Schultz explained.

“There’s a lot of the glazing, translucent white and from the architectural impressions we’ve had it will look pretty good.

“Purples and blacks are being painted at the moment and colours that generally harmonise with those will be throughout the facility.”

The next stage of the project involves the installation of windows and doors, sound and light systems, and further work on acoustic ceilings, cladding and framing.

“In a building like this where a lot of it is concrete work, acoustics and sound work is very important; you don’t want sound bouncing at you from all different angles or echoes created,” Mr Schultz explained.

“We’ve had theatre consultants who specialise in those sorts of features and they pay very important attention to make sure noise doesn’t escape the building and that unwanted noise doesn’t enter the building.”

The building will be able to be configured for different uses with removable seats and stage and about 500m2 of floor space.

It will hold more than 1000 people when standing, and 400 people when seats are deployed.

“We’re very excited and it’s a major boost for the city,” Mr Schultz said.

“It will bring in performances that we may not have seen and our events guys are working very hard on securing high quality entertainment for us.

“We’re looking forward to those first couple of concerts.

“It’s going to be a good facility, one that’s far better than what we had previously.”

Construction of the building, valued at more than $11 million, started June last year.

By BLAIR THOMSON

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Posted by admin on Jan 19 2012. Filed under Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry