The Luggate Memorial Centre already has bookings from local groups and it will welcome the Wānaka Festival of Colour next autumn as one of the biennial arts festival’s regional venues.

The new community building is just a few days old (officially) after an opening ceremony on Saturday (December 3), providing the Luggate community with a hall - five years after the original hall was decommissioned.

Queenstown Lakes deputy mayor Quentin Smith thanked the Luggate Community Association (LCA) for its involvement in the design and development of the new building at the ceremony.

He said he was proud that the new building was both “responsible and efficient” as the first community space built to certified passive house standards - a world-leading building standard centred around energy efficiency which negates the need for heating and cooling.

Deputy mayor Quentin Smith officiating at the hall’s official opening.

To that end the building’s Māori name is Whare Mahana, which means ‘warm house’.

The $5.56M Luggate Memorial Centre has a catering-standard kitchen and two public spaces: a main hall that can be set up in a variety of ways, and a boardroom-style meeting room that can seat up to eight people. 

Yoga and pilates classes were among the first bookings for the new space, QLDC said.

Quentin acknowledged the long wait between the closure of the old hall and the opening of the new one.

The new hall has a variety of public spaces.

The old Luggate Hall was closed in 2017 after a seismic assessment confirmed it had a seismic rating of only 15 percent of the national building standard.

See also: ‘Luggate Hall demolished’

Funding for the new hall was supported by significant grants form the Central Lakes Trust and Otago Community Trust, as well as the allocation of $1M from the Wānaka Asset Sale Reserve (also known as the Scurr Heights fund).

In addition to Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC), the design and project teams included staff from consultancy WSP, Salmond Architecture, Hiberna, The Building Intelligence Group, and Rider Levett Bucknall, and the main contractor was Breen Construction.

Anyone wishing to enquire about the Luggate Memorial Centre or make a booking can contact the QLDC venues team via [email protected].

PHOTOS: Supplied