Oceana Birmingham

Oceana interior shot

BIRMINGHAM

OCEANA

VENUES, DECEMBER 2006, COMMENTS

Christmas is traditionally a busy time for club openings as operators rush to get their new projects ready to make the most of festive trade. And that’s particularly true at Luminar Leisure, which in the eight weeks leading up to 25 December has seen three new venues open their doors to the public. Whilst the technologically-enhanced Liquid clubs each represent a significant investment, the most ostentatious of these new ventures are the company’s flagship, multi million-pound Oceanas - massive, mainstream clubs that as they pop up across the country are redefining high street entertainment. In the last issue of NIGHT we profiled Luminar’s Wolverhampton venture; since then two more have opened, respectively the largest and smallest to arrive into a portfolio that now has a total capacity of almost 20,000 and continues to grow.

The first of the new ventures is Oceana Plymouth, which opened on 26 October. It is a compact site, the only Oceana to be built on a leisure park, and replaces a former Heros/Destiny twin scene entertainment venue. The second venture is the largest to date: a 3,300 capacity club in the heart of Birmingham city centre, featuring five bars, two clubs, a dining room, three private hire suites and a separate VIP entrance. It is located between Summerow and the Arcadian Centre.

With the openings taking place in such quick succession (Plymouth hot on the heels of Wolves, followed two weeks later by Birmingham), the contractors responsible for putting the projects together have had to be on site in three locations simultaneously. Pulling it off was a matter of good will and good planning, explains Brian Hawkins of Birmingham-based Bignell Shacklady Ewing interior design, nominated designers for the brand.

“Key to Oceana projects now, from a design and build point of view, is that there is a great team of people working on it,” he says. “The more we do, the better an understanding of each other we develop, which in turn helps deliver a better result for the client. If we didn’t have that depth of understanding then it would have been extremely difficult to create the three clubs in the available time frame.”

Main contractor WFC’s Steve Howles agrees. “I can’t emphasise how important the team effort is in bringing these complex projects together – the contractors and client directs working closely together with the design team. Working with the same contractors, we’ve developed an understanding of the designers’ brief and the client’s expectations in terms of quality and delivery that we can stick to.”

This understanding helped the team keep the club creation process running smoothly across the three sites. Despite the now-familiar ‘World in One Night’ concept of up to eight differently themed rooms under one roof, this is far from a straightforward roll out: with the scale of the projects and the unique challenges of each site requiring commitment and skill to make the best of the spaces on time, in budget and to the build standard that characterises the brand.

Birmingham, for example, had “tramps living here, rats running around; the electricity board had cut off the power. All of these things needed addressing before we could start,” says Brian Hawkins, describing a particularly challenging site that had been empty for four years before Luminar moved in.

“Then when we got onto the site and started work, we found asbestos,” he continues. “Because of the state of the building when it was surveyed it hadn’t been possible to make a complete assessment - and thus it wasn’t until we actually started stripping back the walls that the problem came to light.”

Undeterred by the development, WFC responded by altering the build schedule to enable them to work around the discovery. Thus they were able to move ahead with the fit out in the unaffected two thirds of the building whilst specialist contractors in NASA-style suits worked behind sealed plastic sheets to remove the offending material. Their flexibility was tested further still when six weeks into the works, after several internal walls had been built, it was discovered that the existing drainage wasn’t adequate for requirements – something that again would have shown up if a proper survey had been possible. WFC again demonstrated their ability to take matters in hand with minimal fuss: pulling the walls back down, digging the floor up and laying a 130-metre run of six inch piping into the ground. These demands compounded an already challenging project, inevitably causing some delay to the building works programme - which meant that for the last eight weeks of the project staff were on site 24 hours a day in order to meet the agreed handover date. But as a result of the team’s efforts, the venue opened as planned on 9 November. And even for those familiar with the brand, there was much to explore - including an open air Mexican Terrace (open to the public from next summer after the smoking ban comes into force) and new concept the Monte Carlo room. The latter’s art deco-themed space proved an instant hit with customers seeking a touch of glitz: Chantelle lighting’s crystal table lamps, a black and gold colour scheme and a striking rendition of the famous Monte-Carlo casino digitally printed onto a ceiling-height sheet of wallpaper (created by Manchester-based Themed Leisure) setting the scene for stylish socialising.

In other areas of the project, familiar concepts were showing signs of evolution. In the main club space of the Reyavik Ice House, for example, the bulk head is shaped into icy spikes; icicle features (made from painted MDF and panelled mirrors) creep up the walls; and BSE-designed, WFC-built custom cabinets housing powerful CVA speakers stand like sentinels around the dancefloor.

“These give the Ice House a powerful warm and concentrated sound centred on the dancefloor,” says Craig Varty of installers CVA. “We used eight One Voice 15/2 speakers, which stand at the top of the arms, with the enclosures below housing two OV 118 bass units each.

“The result is impressive,” he concludes.

Above the speakers a spectacular circular video wall encompasses the floor, onto which video from two Pioneer DVJ-1000s decks is projected. In the DJ booth, a DJM-1000 mixer with MIDI capabilities enable DJs to exercise complete cross fader control of the club’s video mixer through this central interface. The Pioneer kit also features in Plymouth - having been made standard for the brand.

And so to Plymouth – which is trading seven nights a week and has fast established itself as a popular local late night haunt. This venue also required some intelligent thinking in its conception - this time to realise the trademark multi-room format in a very compact space.

Accordingly, and in particular compared to Birmingham, the resulting Plymouth scheme is more condensed. Bignell Shacklady Ewing started drawing work for the venue in December and got onto the site in June to transform the ground floor into the First Port, a Harbourside Restaurant and the Aspen Ski Lodge, with two further bars, the two clubs and the private rooms on the first floor.

“Each Oceana has a site-specific relationship, where the dimensions of the site will determine what you put in there,” explains Brian Hawkins. “In Plymouth we had less floor area, limiting us to four rather than six bars. In conjunction with Luminar, we decided that the warmth of the Ski Lodge in this context made it a better fit than Wakyama, so we opted for that.”

Because of the space restrictions there are no meandering corridors in Plymouth. But by cleverly extending the mezzanine floor the team have managed to incorporate three private suites. This in itself proved a challenge, explains WFC site manager John Hayes: “We had problems with the bases to the mezzanine floor - and commissioned soil analysis to find out if the ground needed piling with concrete to support the structure. Waiting for the results of the analysis to come back caused a delay in proceedings - so as at Birmingham, our team spent the last four weeks of the project working round the clock to ensure it completed on time.”

Another challenge of the Plymouth site was that the New York disco is directly underneath two cinema auditoria – making it particularly critical that noise transfer from the club wasn’t audible upstairs. Acoustic consultants Sound Research Laboratories took two steps that would ensure Oceana wasn’t instantly labelled a noisy neighbour: firstly, it specified a ceiling design to minimise noise escape, and secondly it worked with installers CVA to set electronic noise limiters to the sound system that cannot be adjusted by the manager or DJ.

The result of the collective attention of the specialist contractors is yet another strong addition to the portfolio which, according to Luminar Head of Marketing Christian Poole, will continue to develop throughout 2007. “We have strict criteria that determine whether a location is appropriate for an Oceana, and once these criteria have been met we will only proceed if a suitable site is available,” he explains. “Needless to say, we are looking at a number of new sites for 2007, and expect the portfolio to grow.”

Words: Alex Eyre

Images: Jim Ellam

From: December 2006 Issue

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