Festival Drayton Centre bosses have described the clinching of more than £200,000 in funding to expand the venue as “the final part of the jigsaw.”
A major extension and refurbishment project at the Frogmore Road arts venue will begin in June after a £204,000 grant from Advantage West Midlands (AWM) through its Rural Development Programme for England.
The project will include new meeting rooms, dressing rooms and a workshop area to meet growing demand for use of the centre from community groups in Market Drayton.
Chairman Geoff Vernon said: “This is a great boost for all the people involved at the Festival Drayton Centre, both the volunteers and the community who own it.
“It will enhance its position as a focal point in the town and enable us to accommodate much more by way of community activity as our existing space is under great pressure.
“It took us some six years to get the funding together for the last phase of the project and building work started in 2004 at a cost of more than £1 million.
“We had 16 different funders but what we hadn’t got was the extra money to complete the project as we couldn’t get any more at the time.”
Work on the centre began in 1984, with its doors opening for the first time three years later.
Extra land was secured in 1997 for the second phase of the development which began seven years later and included a 200-seat auditorium, conference rooms and a state-of-the-art cinema.
Mr Vernon said: “We have been persistently looking for the funding that we needed and thanks to AWM, we are now able to complete phase three.
“We are building a multi-purpose space at the back of the stage which will include consulting rooms, meeting rooms, training rooms and a workshop area, before we get to the dressing rooms.
“These are very exciting times for us but we will not be closing down for 16 weeks while the work takes place.
“It will be business as usual.”
Centre manager Glyn Jackson said: “It’s great news that we’ve managed to get the money to complete the final part of the jigsaw and it will bring the project to a conclusion.”
By Winston Brown