York builders William Birch, which has been appointed to carry out much of the work for new centre operators SMG, revealed yesterday that up to 40 employees will work day – and sometimes night – on the project.
Spokesman Paul Goyea said that with acts already booked to perform in the concert hall auditorium in May, the firm had ten weeks to complete the scheme and staff would sometimes work at night and at weekends to help ensure the deadline was met.
City of York Council’s executive member for leisure, Coun Nigel Ayre, of the Liberal Democrats, said he and leisure chief Charlie Croft had spent hundreds of hours on efforts to get the Barbican re-opened after it had remained mostly closed and unused for more than six years.
“It’s a fantastic day for York,” said Coun Ayre. “There used to be 60 or 70 acts a year here, now there will be 350 or so – and at zero cost to the taxpayer.”
A key element of the revamp will be the creation of a new restaurant in the former gym, which will mainly be targeted at customers who want to eat before watching a concert.
The council’s Labour group leader James Alexander has raised concerns about what will happen when coach parties turn up at the concert hall.
He said he feared that, because the nearby Kent Street coach park had been closed, coaches would either stop in the street to drop passengers off, causing congestion, or take them to St George’s Field car park, from where customers would cross Blue Bridge in darkness and up Blue Bridge Lane to get to the centre.
Mr Croft said there were long-term plans for a coach drop-off point outside a proposed hotel elsewhere on the Barbican site. In the short term, a safe alternative dropping off point was being investigated.
