A £1.5m investment to bring Westhoughton Town Hall back into use has been agreed – including the possibility a new cinema, gym, bar and restaurant being built. Bolton council this week agreed to release the funds to the project to refurbish the vacant building to bring it ‘back into viable commercial and office use’.
Bosses said the investment was needed to generate ‘income for the council that will help to protect the fabric of the building for future generations’. The refurbishment and reuse of the town hall was agreed as key priority for council as the building is considered the most important in Westhoughton town centre.
It has been empty for the past five years since council services were centralised. A marketing exercise is ongoing to see the level of interest in the opportunities provided by the refurbishment. The council chamber in the building will be used for town council meetings and part of the building will see the creation of employment workspace.
The council also received 12 expressions of interest in using other parts of the refurbished building. Two of those were deemed unsuitable and will not be taken forward. Of the remaining 10 live enquiries the council said the suggestion to convert part of the space to a gym was ‘unlikely to work within the building’.
The other expressions of interest were for an opticians, two suggestions for a bar or restaurant, a possible Greater Manchester Police presence, shared office space, a café and takeaway, a charity shop and a cinema with food offering. A report to the cabinet member for regeneration, Coun Adele Warren, who approved the proposals this week, said: “Re-purposing existing buildings is always a delicate balancing act. “On the one hand, there is the requirement to respond to our strategic and operational needs.
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“On the other, is obtaining the best fit for those needs in a building designed for different uses. “In this scenario, there is also a need to preserve the features of the building that the community value.” The council said they had identified benefits to preserving the building’s existing qualities and that they planned to work with the grain of thebuilding preserving its architectural qualities and take a minimalist approach to design changes. They said the intention was to ‘create designs that will attract end users and take a flexible approach to space planning that allows adaptation to various uses’.
The report, said: “Within the original 1904 ground floor structure, it is proposed to form a series of openings that sensitively merge some cellular office spaces to create an airy open-plan layout. “The ground floor of the 1992 extension offers several re-purposing opportunities for both retail and commercial space and office use to create three separate spaces.
“Only minor alterations are proposed to the first floor as the council will need to maintain access to the council chamber for their twice monthly town council meetings.” The next steps in the marketing campaign will see national and regional occupiers targeted until March, 2023.
All successful users would be moved into the refurbished town hall within the next 12-18 months. The time scale of the project was listed as a planning application submission in March, main works starting on site September 2023 with completion of the site September 2024.
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