A centre of excellence

It's anniversary on September 6 will be marked quietly at the centre, because the venue will be in the throes of an £18 million renovation project.

The BIC has been a source of controversy in the town since before it was built. Critics have found its appearance uninspiring, and it has perhaps never supplanted the Pavilion or Winter Gardens in the town's affections.

Yet an average of 300,000 people a year go to shows there, and the centre has been credited with generating many hundreds of jobs in the town.

The idea of building a convention centre on Bournemouth's West Cliff was first considered in the 1960s and was the subject of a seemingly endless debate in the following decade.

The town's traditional bucket-and-spade holiday trade was in decline, while the days when even the major political party conferences could fit into the Pavilion Theatre were numbered.

Kevin Sheehan, director of the BIC and Pavilion, said: "Bournemouth has always been one of the top resorts for entertainment and always one of the top destinations for conferences and exhibitions. But what happened with conferences was that things were changing. They were getting bigger and better."

At the start of the 1980s, Britain's top conference destinations were Bournemouth, Brighton, Blackpool and Scarborough. All were considering investment in new facilities. Scarborough dropped out of the first division after letting nearby Harrogate steal a march on it by building a new conference centre.

With the arguments at Bournemouth Town Hall just about settled, the BIC was opened on September 6 1984.

Mr Sheehan said: "It was built to a budget rather than a specification. It cost £18 million with the car park. In 1990, the Purbeck Hall was opened and that cost at least £6.5 million."

Originally, the BIC consisted of two halls for entertainment and conferences, plus an indoor swimming pool with wave machine. Twenty years later, the closure of the pool to accommodate more exhibition space was to be another local controversy.

The purpose of the centre may have been to host conferences, but its lucrative sideline in entertainment events quickly became important.

Mr Sheehan said: "It was built as a convention centre. Within the first month we had the first sell-out entertainment event, Johnny Mathis."

That, he recalls, was the first occasion on which 3,000 members of the public converged on the BIC - many of them just before show time - looking for a parking space.

In the intervening 20 years, the Windsor Hall has hosted many of the country's top names in music and comedy. There were early complaints about the sound quality, or the fact that some people's view was blocked by speakers, and many missed the days when top-flight entertainers played the Winter Gardens.

But it was the BIC that enabled the town to secure the likes of Elton John, Sting, Wham, Take That, Oasis, Blur, Diana Ross, Jose Carreras, Chuck Berry, Barry Manilow, Bob Dylan and several helpings of both Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey.

Two other regular sell-out shows are Daniel O'Donnell and Cliff Richard, both of whose fans will camp out to be there when the box office opens.

These one-night events may take enormous sums at the box office, but promoters know they will sell out and are striking increasingly hard bargains with the BIC. "The sell-outs don't always make a big amount of money," said Mr Sheehan.

The biggest money-spinner in the BIC's history was not a concert. "The best business that we will ever do with a show was Riverdance in 1997," said Mr Sheehan.

"It took £2.4 million in six-and-a-half weeks, 52 performances; 112,000 people saw it and we did 93 per cent capacity. That will be on my epitaph. That was not a summer show; it was a spectacular show that happened to be available in the summer of 1997."

But if a big entertainment booking can make serious money for the venue, conferences are the events which benefit the wider town.

The first major political conference at the BIC was the Labour Party's autumn gathering in October 1985. This was the one at which leader Neil Kinnock delivered his memorable attack on Militant. But for the next 15 years Labour took its conferences elsewhere - perhaps because its members were keener to visit Labour-controlled Brighton and Blackpool. It finally returned in 1999, with the biggest party conference Europe had ever seen, and was back in 2003.

The Conservatives were more regular visitors, coming to town in 1986, 1990, 1994 and practically every other year since. Margaret Thatcher opened the centre's third hall, the Purbeck Hall, in 1990, weeks before being ousted as prime minister.

The Liberal Democrats stayed away for several years but have become regular visitors.

Massive security has accompanied party conferences ever since the Mrs Thatcher came close to being killed by an IRA bomb at Brighton in 1984. That has made the conferences unpopular with some locals, but BIC staff insist they - along with other conferences and exhibitions - are vital to the town.

The number of conference delegates has averaged 65,471 a year in the last 12 years. The record-breaker was 1999-2000 - the year of Labour's return - which attracted 71,000 delegates.

Other big events have included visits from the Communication Workers Union (which brings 3,000 delegates) and Unison (2,500), and the European launch in 1994 of Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system.

BIC bosses estimate the conference trade is worth £40-£50 million a year in "economic benefit" to the town.

Some feel this money only benefits Bournemouth's town centre, but Clive Tyers, head of conferences and exhibitions at the BIC, says the whole area reaps the benefits of spending in hotels, restaurants and shops.

He said: "It's those staff that don't live necessarily in the town centre. They live right across the conurbation and they come to work in the bars and restaurants and the clubs, they earn their money and they go around spending it wherever they spend it."

He believes the BIC has been instrumental in attracting, and keeping, major hotel chains in the area. And he points out that enquiries from organisers of smaller conferences are referred straight to those hotels which can accommodate them.

While the Dorset economy may benefit from conferences, the BIC itself is subsidised to the tune of £2 million a year by Bournemouth's council tax payers.

Kevin Sheehan says all major conference centres operate the same way, either subsidised by councils or run by private firms who cross-subsidise them with the takings from more profitable venues.

He said: "I've always been under the impression that local authorities' raison d'etre was to provide a service to the town. For an investment of £2 million, to get £50 million out the end is good value for money."

If the centre is doing so well, why is it necessary to close its swimming pool and shut the Windsor Hall for the best part of a year for refurbishment?

Mr Tyers says the BIC is losing business because conferences increasingly require more exhibition space. The Royal College of Nursing has already quit Bournemouth because other venues give it more opportunity to make money from attracting exhibitors to its annual gathering.

"It's a prime example of an association that recognises the need to have an annual gathering but also recognises that it can make money, because there are lots of companies out there wanting to be seen to be part of that event and prepared to pay to have their exhibition stands there," he said.

Work is already under way to turn the swimming pool into the Solent Hall - much to the annoyance of the pool's users, of whom there were up to 210,000 a year at its peak, before the opening of the Littledown Centre hit attendances.

Construction work will pause between September 10 and November 7 to make way for conferences, including the Tory and Lib Dem autumn gatherings. Refurbishment will re-start in November, with the new Solent Hall to open on the site of the swimming pool next September and the whole project due for completion by October 2005.

Mr Tyers insists the public will benefit from new attractions to compensate for the demise of the pool. An ice rink has already proved a success and should be a more regular visitor when there is more space for events.

Meanwhile, the Windsor Hall will see its capacity increased from 3,600 to 4,200 for seated events, and from 4,200 to 7,000 for standing concerts.

That should put the BIC in the market for touring stars such as David Bowie, Stereophonics, The Corrs and Nickelback. It could also attract back some stars who have outgrown the venue, such as Westlife, Meat Loaf, Sting and Diana Ross.

The future will be challenging for the BIC. Convention centres in Britain and Europe - including the 10 new EU member states - will compete ever more aggressively for business. And when it comes to summer shows, there is no longer any massively popular star who can fill the Windsor Hall for a season.

Kevin Sheehan, who is to retire before the refurbishment is complete, insists the centre will continue to benefit the town.

He said: "I think the best decision this council has made in living memory was to open the BIC - but I'm somewhat biased."