Hopes to save the facade of the Roxburgh Entertainment Centre after the building was destroyed by fire last week have been dashed.

Central Otago District Council’s property team told councillors yesterday that while the facade of the building was in a stable condition, it would be too risky and expensive to keep it.

The best option would be to demolish the site and have something fresh to work with, staff said.

Retaining the facade would involve clearing the rubble from the far side and trying to retain walls, to keep it stable.

Staff described the process as costly and time consuming and said the facade was only brick and veneer on a concrete base.

A full site demolition would only take five days, but retaining the facade would take many weeks, the meeting was told.

Roxburgh Community Board chair Norman Dalley was invited to speak at the extraordinary meeting and said while acknowledging everyone in the Teviot wanted to keep the facade, “common sense prevails.”

Roxburgh-based district councillor Sally Feinerman said they could do everything to save it, “but it could still not be saveable, “and that's not reasonable as we’ve spent a whole lot of money.”

Despite the devastating loss of the entertainment centre to fire last week, movies are being organised at an alternative location, on March 29.

The Roxburgh Cinema had been showing movies since 1897 making it one of the longest continuously running cinemas in the world. 

Meanwhile, Mayor Tamah Alley announced that the Millers Flat hall would be retained and potentially not on the table for divestment anymore.

She said the community needed to have a facility where they could gather and hold events and celebrations.

The perception in the Teviot Valley was the proposed closure of its Millers Flat hall was a done deal, and the hall committee had been talking to council about ways to take it over.

Cr Feinerman said it was nice to reasonably offer her community some assurance that they were going to keep the hall.

Read more: Teviot community getting stirred up about LTP

Read more: Cinema to continue movie screenings despite fire

Have a story to share?

Contact [email protected]