Marine Hall Theatre Operating Contract

Description

Marine Hall is an art deco, multipurpose venue built in 1935 and is celebrating its 90th birthday in November 2025. Sitting in a prime seafront location, surrounded by beautiful, well-kept gardens. Marine Hall has a strong emotional connection with the people of Fleetwood who very often have grown up with the venue, met their special loved one, and occasionally even married them in the Hall. Such strong community connections ensure there is support for the Hall to build on what has already gone before, achieve success and deliver a viable mix of community and professionally staged events across the year. In keeping with its place as an important community asset, the Hall was given over to the use as a Covid-19 vaccination hub for two years during the pandemic when all cultural activity came to a halt. Whilst this reminded local people of its value, it also made it more difficult to bring it back to life in its natural guise as it was still administering vaccines when other venues were benefiting from a Covid bounce. Wyre Council have committed to the future of Marine Hall, both as a singular space for entertainment and cultural participation and as a central element of the Fleetwood Waterfront Masterplan which embraces the Hall as an economic driver for other activity and wellbeing activities on the seafront location. On taking part in a survey on the future of the Marine Hall two years ago, local people made it clear they expect to see the Hall maintained, strengthened and continue to be used as a cultural asset. In ensuring viability for the Hall, work was done to achieve a viable programming option that could take the venue forward. Moving from a fixed fee-based venue for hire to a commercial "split deal" venue has allowed venue management to rebuild a more varied and attractive programming proposition with higher value promoters and artists whilst still staging community product in a financially viable way. Our versatile main hall holds 650 people seated or 957 standing and is capable of staging a full-on market with changeover to a seated theatre show or a full dinner or cabaret setting. Marine Hall benefits from two very sizeable bar spaces servicing the auditorium. There is an appetite within the council to continue to invest in what is undoubtedly a major cultural asset and Wyre will work in partnership with the successful operator and key stakeholders to deliver a strong and viable cultural offer at Marine Hall. In bringing our aspirations for the redevelopment of the Waterfront Bar closer to reality, Wyre have invested approximately £35,000 in architectural design work up to RIBA 3 for this space and the adjoining kitchen. In doing so, we aim to create a daytime hospitality and hire proposition as well as a second performance space with the capacity of 110. In recognition that these changes have the potential to deliver new income streams in the future which will undoubtedly play a key part in the operator's commercial and artistic plans, we will provide opportunities during the tender process for potential operators to influence these. We envisage the full cost of this investment will sit with Wyre and predict any such work will take place from April 2026 with completion in time for Christmas 2026. Provisional drawings have been provided in the data room but these are subject to change throughout the process. In addition to the standard programme, Marine Hall will stage our inaugural Film Festival in February 2026. With opportunities for local as well as national and international film makers to screen their work, this promises to play a big part in developing movie making talent within Wyre. Investment from Wyre has already delivered a new ticketing and CRM system that better allows us to understand and market to our existing audience whilst devising strategies to build the audience of the future. Advance bookings currently sit higher than the previous nine years cumulatively and continued effort to improve programming will see this grow further, particularly with the addition of our second space. Wyre are seeking a theatre operator as a partner in delivering these and future cultural aspirations for the people of Fleetwood and the wider Wyre area.