ERA’s perspective on a future entertainment centre in Wagga Wagga

Proposed expansion of the Civic Theatre at the Wollundry Lagoon. Image: Wagga Wagga City Council

Introduction

Eastern Riverina Arts works closely with all levels of government to deliver cultural activity, partnerships and infrastructure in our region. Our staff are experienced in organising events and festivals, producing performing arts tours, and cultural infrastructure planning.

This submission responds to a callout from Wagga Wagga City Council for the community to vote on two competing proposals that address the Wagga Wagga City Council’s ambition for enhanced conferencing and entertainment facilities.

To prepare this submission, we spoke with touring promoters, conferencing and event industry personnel, venue technicians, public works consultants, venue architects and many, many local artists and performers. We maintained an open dialogue with Council and our stakeholders throughout the process, and based on their input, submitted the below proposal on 22 December 2023.

Summary

We applaud Wagga City Council’s intention to invest in entertainment and cultural facilities as a positive step that will pay dividends to our community and our economy.

We find that Option B - expansion of the Wagga Wagga Civic Theatre - presents strategically sound and operationally-viable solution, aligning with the city's long-term economic and cultural development goals. With a slight adjustment to its present design (an expansion to ‘Venue 2 to increase overall capacity), it can not only meet the entertainment needs of the present, but also become a leading venue for conferencing and business events.

This paper concludes that Option A - a new Conference and entertainment centre - is a risky project that will not deliver the cultural and economic windfalls it promises without a sizeable ongoing cash investment from Council for the foreseeable future, and that it risks becoming a ‘stranded’ asset that is underutilised and costly to maintain. This concept has been based on the proposition that a single cavernous venue can be configured to suit a broad range of uses; but such a design carries a high risk of being expensive to reconfigure and may not service any of its intended uses particularly well.

Eastern Riverina Arts supports the proposal for a Wiradjuri First Nations Keeping Place and Cultural Centre, but calls for further clarity in regards Council’s commitment to maintain and support the operation of this facility.

We encourage interested people in our community to engage with the current consultation process, and to make a submission via Council’s engagement portal before the deadline of 5pm, 22 December 2023.