The Twyford Hall committee has celebrated the selection of a building company, Monarch Building Solutions, of Canberra, for the new Theatre Twyford, due to start early in 2020.
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The company has experience in theatre building work having completed the Street Theatre Canberra extension.
Director of Monarch Marco Galeotti said the company was looking forward to engaging with the community "and building something you'll be proud off and which will sit nicely in our portfolio".
The appointment of a builder comes after the project was awarded $7.4m from the NSW Regional Communities Development Fund in May 2018.
Member for Bega Andrew Constance thanked long-term president of the Twyford Hall Committee Bill Deveril and the committee.
"Community is about people and the vision and aspiration of this community is particularly exciting. People yet to be born will present in this theatre to their community. It is going to be a tourist icon in a tourist shire," Mr Constance said.
"You can never put a dollar value on the arts, they just make life so much better.
"We are in one of the worst droughts and one of the best things is to invest in infrastructure," Mr Constance said.
It was a sentiment echoed by Cr Sharon Tapscott who said it had been a great achievement to get that amount of money, particularly for arts.
There will be well over 90 per cent local trades involved.
- Monarch Building Solutions project manager Mark Baker
"Infrastructure is the gift that keeps on giving. $7m goes a long way in a little community," Cr Tapscott said.
Mr Galeotti said that the company would use local contractors as much as possible for the job.
The project manager is local Mark Baker who worked on the Woolworths contract.
"There will be well over 90 per cent local trades involved, plumbers, tilers, plasterers, concreters, electricians, all trades" Mr Baker said.
He said the company was already starting this month with site investigations on power and for traffic management.
"It's about the logistics of building around an existing building (Twyford Hall will stay); it's not a greenfield site. It's all got to be planned and staged," Mr Baker said.
For Twyford Committee president Mr Deveril it has been over 20 years of campaigning for a new theatre.
"About nine years ago Andrew Constance came down and gave us the money for the kitchen. About five years ago he attended a committee meeting (to discuss the theatre proposal). Afterwards he said: 'I'm going to get you the money'," Mr Deveril recalled.
"Thank you very, very much, you said you'd get it and you did," Mr Deveril told those at the announcement on Wednesday, December 4.
Mr Constance said he looked forward to opening a fantastic new facility this time next year.
Monarch Building Solutions' winning bid was put to Twyford Hall Incorporated after a Governance Group - comprising representatives from Twyford Hall Inc, the Bega Valley Shire Council, the Department of Premier & Cabinet and CreateNSW - signed off on a tendering process overseen by project managers Donald Cant Watts Cooke.
