Stuart WoodCroydon’s Fairfield Halls, which has undergone a troubled development since it closed for refurbishment in 2016, has announced its fifth opening date.
The venue’s re-opening has been pushed back several times, and the latest date it is supposed to open has been set for September 2019.
The redevelopment was originally supposed to be finished by June 2018, at a cost of £30m. But industry experts have estimated it could be running over to as much as £40m.
The venue has also recently had a number of headline acts leaked ahead of schedule, after Ticketmaster and BHLive (Fairfield’s management company) listed performances by Jimmy Carr, Rob Beckett and more on their websites.
This contradicts what venue manager Neil Chandler told councillors as a committee meeting in December, when it was claimed the first announcements of Fairfield gigs would be made when the venue’s new website launches on January 19.
The global engineering and development consultancy which drew up the plans for the redeveloped venue, Mott MacDonald, has also left the project.
Building work is being completed by Croydon Council’s in-house consruction group Brick by Brick, a company which was formed in 2015 and has yet to complete a single house.
Inside the disastrous refurbishment of Croydon’s Fairfield Halls