GLASGOW'S newest venue, the £125 million SSE Hydro, will literally have to wait for the dust to settle after a successful opening night concert by Rod Stewart.
The chief executive of SECC, John Sharkey, said he was delighted with how the venue functioned for its first event which saw the veteran rocker entertaining an audience of 12,000 to positive reviews.
The venue, Mr Sharkey said, worked well in its key operations, with few glitches for people entering or exiting from the new car park, and internal drink and food outlets running well. Audience members at the venue praised the acoustics, and Mr Sharkey said all cars had left the car park by 11pm, an hour after the finish.
Mr Sharkey praised his "world-class" team for getting the venue ready for the major event not long after taking it over from the builders. However, he said the newness of the building means his team will be engaging in extra cleaning as the building "settles" and extra amounts of dust gather inside the auditorium. This settlement period will last a few weeks, he said.
In the meantime, the venue's flexibility will be tested to the full, with differing stage and seating configurations for Jesus Christ Superstar, which opened last night, Fleetwood Mac appearing on Thursday night, Bruno Mars on Sunday, comedian Micky Flanagan on October 10 and The Proclaimers on October 12.
"We are sitting here pretty happy this morning," Mr Sharkey said. "We had a pretty good first night. People were saying the acoustics were superb and I do think it sounded very, very good. It is not long since it was a building site and there is a period of settlement involved, but there is nothing we can do about that except do extra cleaning.
"Ultimately 12,000 happy people went home. Getting it to this stage has been a monumental achievement: the team worked all hours and they have been world class."
It is hoped the venue will host around 140 events a year, attracting an audience of one million people, making it the fifth-busiest entertainment arena in the world.
It is estimated the building, designed by Foster + Partners architects, will generate up to £131m for the local economy every year.
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