Wick community hub celebrates first birthday
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CELEBRATING its first birthday this weekend, the significance of the Pulteney Centre to the north Highlands in such a short space of time has seen it come of age.
Twelve months ago, the Pulteneytown Peoples Project opened the doors of its new community centre to the public after six years of fundraising to meet its £3.4 million cost.
But the employment, business, education and leisure opportunities created has proved it to be worth every penny to the far north.
Today and tomorrow the centre is inviting members of the public to come and join in celebrating their birthday with two days of fun-packed activities catering for all the family.
Centre manager Julie Cassidy said it has been a year full of new experiences for everybody associated with the facility.
"The last 12 months has just whizzed past for us but everyone was delighted with its success," she said.
"It has been a huge learning process for everyone, we doubled our number of employees to 46 overnight and enable more services than we have before.
"Previously we were working out of six council houses, so to work in a building of this size was even a challenge."
"We have managed to come through all these obstacles and deliver as strong a service as we ever had before."
The success of the Pulteney Centre partly lies in its cafe which has served over 25,000 customers since it first opened.
The figures do not take into the account the number of people who take part in education classes and use its childcare facilities with a soft play area, the only one in the Highlands outside Inverness.
But it is not just a service that is used by residents in Wick as visitors from as far afield as Thurso, Brora and Golspie have also made use of its facilities, inadvertently turning into a tourist attraction for Wick.
"People come from as far afield as West Caithness and Sutherland just to have an enjoyable day out with their family," said Mrs Cassidy.
"Visitors from Sutherland have said it would take them just as long to get to Inverness, but Wick is far more accessible to them.
"We obviously hoped we would get people from further afield, but the amount of visitors from these areas was more than we expected. We need our services to be well used and the support that we have received from the general public has been fantastic.
"It is a delight for us just to see the place being busy on a regular basis."
The centre has also become an attractive location for corporate use, with a number of businesses using its conference rooms and hall to stage business meetings and networking events.
It also has a training centre which runs certificated courses in a number of different areas but also runs hobby classes.
The facility is also heavily involved in youth work which includes helping school leavers prepare for college or future employment.
Mrs Cassidy said that the centre is still applying for funding to keep it going, but was well on its way to being self-sustaining.
"The only time we would apply for funding is to introduce new services to the centre," she said.
"But we always work in a way that we provide services that we can afford to organise within our own means.
"The Pulteneytown Peoples Project is doing everything that it did before it moved into the centre but we are now doing it on a larger scale.
"We try and arrange activities for people of all ages as our main goal is to offer something for everyone."
