Glasgow Chamber Of Commerce

THE new £125m entertainment venue being built at the SECC will be called the Scottish Hydro Arena, with Scottish Hydro sponsoring the purpose-built entertainment arena.

The company will invest £1.5m each year for the next 10 years in what is seen as a groundbreaking venue for Scotland.

Work on Scotland's new national arena started in February next to the SECC, and is expected to be finished in 2013.

It will be able to seat 12,000 people and will host around 140 events each year, ranging from national and international music superstars to entertainment and sporting events.

The iconic building, designed by Foster and Partners, aims to attract an audience of one million visitors each year - putting it in the top five busiest indoor music arenas in the world, alongside such iconic venues as Madison Square Gardens, New York, and the O2 arena in London.

The Hydro has the potential to inject an additional £131million annually into the local economy."

Glasgow Chamber of Commerce chief executive Stuart Patrick said:

"An indoor arena of this size will attract events and performers, both sporting and cultural, that were not previously a target for the city. This will very much increase Glasgow's potential on the international stage, putting us on a whole new level.

"We have already seen evidence of this in the winning of the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastic Championship, and there will be many more such wins, with the value to Glasgow going far beyond the event itself both in value of prestige and in cash coming into the local economy.

"The building of this arena raises our capability as a city, not only to organise such events, but also to attract further investment.

"As an aside on Scottish Hydro's involvement, to see such a major sponsorship commitment from a big corporate in the Scottish renewables industry is a real sign of the strength of that sector - as highlighted in last week's HSBC futures report naming Glasgow as a Super City in renewables."