Edition 32
February 11, 2021
NorthernRiversTimes
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LEAGUES CLUB SET TO RISE FROM ASHES
By Tania Spiers Phillips CUDGEN Leagues club is set to rise from the ashes of a fire which caused extensive damage to the building in May of last year, with the club’s chairman predicting it will be bigger and better than ever. Club chairman Peter McConnell said work was now underway on the roof of the building, which had long been a focal point for the Kingscliff community and it was now expected to have a function area that would cater for 700 people, double it’s previous capacity. With Kingscliff only having a small community hall in the centre of town, the club had been at the epicentre of town life since it was opened back in 1979, hosting everything from club presentations, Primary School formals and national football teams to town meetings, weddings and the local U3A, RSL and other service groups. With
many groups having to seek temporary meeting spaces since the fire that shocked the town in early May. However McConnell said work was finally underway to bring the building back to life. “The roof is being restored and replaced, the DA for that went through council before Christmas and work has commenced on removing the sections of the roof that have to be completely removed,” he said. “There will be a complete new roof but some of the girders and trusses will be completely replaced and others will be refurbished. “The plan is that work commences on the roof while we have the next DA in Council awaiting approval. All going well by the time the roof is finished the interior DA will be approved and they can seamlessly move on to the interior of the club rather than to go away and come back again.”
Cudgen Leagues Club structural roof work is underway with a DA currently before Council for the inside work. Games will be played on the field this year though the grandstand and club is not expected to be operational until at least late August. Left: Firefighters tackle the blaze last May. McConnell said the board had been told by the contractors that if everything went to schedule they should be open probably by the end of August. “They said 32 weeks but we’ll see how that goes, I wouldn’t be advertising that as a definite opening date, it might run into September,” he said. “But we’ve been told, depending on when the DA comes out that it will be a 32-week build and they’re hopeful the DA will be out at the end of February which the contractor believes will have
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them finished at the end of August.” Mr McConnell said as yet there had not been official word back from coroner following the police investigation of the fire. “As far as I know the police have sent their report to the coroner, I was informed that we’ll get a copy of it when the coroner releases his findings,” he said. “From information from the police, they don’t have any suspicious circumstances let’s put it that way, they don’t think it was deliberately lit from their investigations.
“The fire pretty well destroyed completely, for want of a better word, the new section of the club which would be the western wing. It completely destroyed everything in that wing, apart from the miraculous RSL room – they seemed to come out unscathed, I don’t know how because everything either side was completely destroyed. The southern end of the club was severely smoke damaged, some heat damage but not as severely damaged as the newer section of the club.” continued inside page 7 ☛