The Sir Howard Morrison Performing Arts Centre is to close after it fell below earthquake standards - and the cost to fix it could run into the millions of dollars.
Rotorua Lakes Council made the announcement today.
Council arts and culture director Stewart Brown told the Rotorua Daily Post a detailed seismic assessment had found the Fenton St building had fallen below building standards and was now an earthquake-prone risk building.
"This is an important facility for our local performing arts community so it's obviously disappointing. We never make these decisions lightly but we cannot compromise on public safety and we think the community will understand that," he said.
''We are talking months for the remedial work, not years like the situation we are in with the [Rotorua] museum."
Brown said although there had been no detailed seismic drawings done yet he suspected the cost of bringing the building up to standard "would be millions".
''We are not quite clear what that may look like at this point... it's too early to tell until we get the detailed design done."
He said it was different to the situation with the closed museum, as in this case they had all the information they needed and knew what the issues were whereas they had no idea with the museum.
It already knew about issues with Concert Chamber walls, he said.
''There are also some issues with connections and bracings in the foyer and stage areas but we know what needs to be done to fix those. Work done on the facility in previous years was compliant but methodologies have changed and we now have new building standards as a result of learnings from Christchurch."
Brown said the seven staff employed at the centre would be redeployed across other facilities during the closure.
Organisers of events scheduled to be held at the centre over the coming months were being advised of the closure, he said.
"We'll now work with event organisers and promoters who had bookings to find alternative solutions for as many as we possibly can and we'll be creative in coming up with options.''
Brown said it was always a challenge when these sort of things happened.
"Our decision here is about public safety and the safety of our staff and that has to be paramount."
He said plenty of other buildings across the country faced similar issues.
The Ticketmaster office will be moved to the Energy Events Centre.
#LIVE: Major announcement regarding the Sir Howard Morrison Performing Arts Centre.
But the Concert Chamber remained closed while a detailed seismic assessment of that part of the building was done.
The Concert Chamber was part of the original 1938 centre and was incorporated into the current building during its redevelopment in the mid-1990s. The chamber was a Category One heritage building so the council was working with Heritage New Zealand at the time regarding assessments.
Meanwhile residents were still reeling over the closure of the iconic Rotorua Museum that had been shut since November last year due to significant structural damage.
A Detailed Seismic Assessment of the building showed it fell well below earthquake safety standards.
The council has said the museum can be fixed but if, how, when, and how much it would cost was still to be determined.
The category 1 heritage building, which is more than 100 years old, was damaged by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Kaikoura in 2016.