New Premises For Workingmens Club

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29897, 10 August 1962, Page 17

New Premises For Workingmens Club

■ One of - the four oldest workingmen’s clubs in the country, the one at Kaiapoi has embarked on a £28.000 modernisation project to better cater for the residents of the rapidly expanding borough. Looking to the future the club hopes that the present plans will prove adequate to cope with the population growth during the next 20 years at least.

To enable the modernisation programme to be carried out about half the old buildings were bulldozed out of the way—buildings which

had served the community for the best part of 60 years with “bits being added piecemeal to keep pace with the demands.” A major feature of the new section of the building will be the combined social room and bar built of concrete blocks with steel portal frames supporting the roof to give 2400 square feet of open floor space. A twostorey section of the building, constructed around prestressed concrete frames, will house the administration block, including a president’s

room, committee room, gen- ; eral office, library, reading room, and a women's room. Now in its seventy-seventh year, the club has 1000 annual members and more than 600 life members and the rebuilding project will enable many new members to be enrolled. And for the future . . . ' when an increasing membership demands, the club will be able to expand its facilities further by clearing away the rest of the old buildings and erecting a further modern two-storey block.