About Us
Venue History
Pacific Road Arts Centre was a former transit warehouse dating back to the early 19 th century. Many believe it was formerly the Lairidge. Purchased from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board in the 1980’s the building has had several uses. It housed a large collection of council buses and heritage vehicles for many years and the trams for the current Heritage Trail operating between Woodside Ferry and Taylor Street depot are powered from the building.
In the 1990’s the Hamilton Quarter, one of the first organisations set up to initiate, direct and manage European and SRB funded regeneration projects in this particular area of Birkenhead began to utilise the building for some of their arts projects. At this time the building had been earmarked as the site for a large transport museum. Shortly after this it was decided that the building should assume a duel role – half becoming a performance space, the other a museum. Money was invested in the theatre side of the building, providing seating and state of the art sound and lighting system. One of the major architectural designs in the museum half of the building was the recreation of a Victorian street scene which provided rows of shop fronts – expected to house exhibitions and really enhance and bring alive the museum to its visitors. Unfortunatey, a lottery bid was turned down in the late 1990’s and the work to the museum had to be curtailed.
Venue Today
Today, this street-scene provides office space and rehearsal areas for the Wirral Youth Theatre, Active Drama, KGB Music, Buzz Radio and the box office and administration for Pacific Road Arts Centre. In April 2001 Pacific Road was assigned its first budget and the work of ensuring the venue could survive financially began with a vengeance. The main generation of its income comes from their own promotions and associated box office income plus the income from private hire of the venue.
In 2001 Pacific Road launched its first programme season and used the existing client database from the International Guitar Festival and Jazz Festival held at the Hamilton Quarter Office. The main generation of its income comes from its own promotions and associated box office income plus the income from private hire of the venue. With this season Pacific Road aimed to cater for as many people on Wirral as possible – the programme was very diverse and offered everything, from folk, jazz, soul and rock to classical
As an entertainment venue, Pacific Road attracts great artists from both the national and international music circuit and brings in audiences from Wirral, Merseyside, the North West and Europe.
So what makes Pacific Road such a special venue? Primarily, its flexibility as a performance space and its great acoustics and atmosphere. It is able to configure seating to suit all types of arts and conference activities. It has raked seating for 400; cabaret seating for 285 and can hold standing concerts for up to 600 people. Users of the venue come from all across Wirral and today from much further a field. We promote our own concerts and work with promoters both on a local and national level. The building is available for hire throughout the year and used by many community arts groups. We are the home of the Liverpool Mozart Orchestra and the Liverpool Philharmonic performs 6 concerts a year at the venue. Many dance schools and local theatre societies and operatic and choral groups hire the venue for their productions. The building is also used for private functions, weddings and fundraisers.
Audience development has been Pacific Roads main focus over the past four years and have been increasingly trying to seek out new ways of familiarising people with the venue and attracting them to attend events. It is still amazing just how few people still do not know where the venue is or even know of its existence. Our box office is crucial to our income generation and is the main way that we collate marketing information to assist in our audience development.
In 2000 – 2002 Pacific road only had around 10,000 visitors. This figure has grown substantially over the last 4 years and in 2003/4 to some 80,000 people. The main audiences attending Pacific Road are identified as being that of 35 – 60 year olds +, ranging from low-income earners to consumers who have medium level of disposable income, 2.5 families, etc. Pacific Road is constantly looking at ways to attract younger audiences of 16 – 30 year olds to make up the consumer numbers as the older generation begin to fall away. In 2002/3 Pacific Road’s website was launched with the ability for people to book and buy tickets on line. This facility has proved to be very popular and booking on line now accounts for some 40% of our ticket sales.
Hire of the venue
Pacific Road enjoys an excellent reputation as a centre for events and conferences both on a local and national level. This is largely due to the flexibility of the venue, its excellent technical facilities, proximity to good travel links, and most importantly, friendly and helpful staff who are committed to ensuring that your event is a great success.
As a theatre space, it welcome all local and amateur groups offering full technical support, assistance with box office, and refurbished backstage facilities.
