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| 23rd August 2005 Welcome to our new website! First of all a big thank you to all those that filled in a questionnaire; we had an overwhelming response and the information was really useful. We thought it was about time we updated you on our progress so here’s the story so far… We found the building in September ’04 and set about obtaining planning permission. After a gruelling 4 months, planning was finally granted on the 7th January. It then took a further 4 months to negotiate a lease and we finally got the keys to ‘our’ building on May 3rd. Armed with a screwdriver and a crowbar, we set about removing all the cr@p left in the building by the previous occupant!  The next job was removing the suspended ceiling to expose the roof beams. 
This is where the problems began! 
There was a bit more wood in the roof than we expected and all the cross beams had to be removed.  In doing this, we revealed that the roof was being held up by a couple of snooker table legs, which turned out to have also suffered fire damage – It did not take the engineer to tell us that this wasn’t safe!  In addition to this, we found that the beams were not spaced as we first thought and the climbing wall design needed to be altered. The next job was to prepare downstairs for the removal of the floor and construction of the steel work. This included removing the ceiling… 
…demolishing the toilets… 
…and digging the foundations. 
So…that’s where we’re up to. We expect demolition of the floor and remaining internal walls to start early September and the steel work and walls to be erected soon after. It seems like we’re a long way off, but the good news is that all the climbing wall panels have been cut, assembled and packed onto pallets ready for transportation to site. We don’t have a definite opening date yet, but we believe that it will only take approximately 8 weeks from start of construction to being ready to open, which takes us to early November. We will keep you updated on works and let you know as soon as we can confirm the opening date. |