City News

The NEC’s £40 million Venue Improvement Programme is now in full swing and with more than three quarters of the development already complete the venue is showcasing a brand new look and feel for visitors to enjoy.

The improvement programme, which began in 2005, will upgrade the facilities at The NEC over five years. The piazza, halls one to five built in 1976, has undergone a dramatic transformation. New flooring, lighting, plasma screens, extra seating, brand new toilets, catering pods and new signage to help navigate around the venue have given the area a completely new identity.

Catering, with its new clean and fresh brand image, is refurbishing all restaurants in the piazza area of The NEC. Halls three and five are now complete and open to the public, and work on halls one, two and four has begun and is due to be completed by September. In addition to this a second Wetherspoons restaurant has recently opened at the venue and complete with an outside terrace it adds to the mix of eateries available at the centre.

To help visitors navigate around site new maps and signage will be in place by the end of the year, ‘Plan It’ – a visitor guide has been introduced, an information point has opened and the venues visitor and business centres have been refurbished.

Other improvements that have been made to the venue include freshly painted cladding – The NEC now boasts a vibrant red and orange exterior, new roofing, resurfacing key north car parks and increasing the number of CCTV security cameras.

Riach Ryder, Director of Operations, The NEC Group, said: “The piazza has seen phenomenal changes, the area is unrecognisable to the way it looked just two years ago.

“The VIP programme has been an enormous step forward for the business, which will keep us in line with competitors and make sure that we remain the leading exhibition venue in the country.

“At the moment we are busy creating the new NEC headquarters in floors above the piazza, which will be ready for the move in January next year.”