Freshers make do with marquee as bar and club remain closed

The opening of the new Imperial College Union venues FiveSixEight (can’t they count?) and Metric has been delayed by 3 weeks and 1 month respectively. Disappointed students will have to wait until the 18th of October to experience the new bar FiveSixEight and the 29th of October for the new club Metric.

Construction on the club Metric was hampered by a number of complications including uncovering unknown basements and voids during the removal of the pillar that used to stand in the centre of the club. Ravi Pall, Deputy President (Finance & Services), stated that there is no one reason why the Metric opening date has shifted. Rather, the age of the building has resulted in a combination of delays including the removal of old pipe work but the Union acknowledged that Metric would almost certainly have opened on time had it not been for the removal of the pillar. However they did add that “not removing it would have heavily compromised the quality of the venue and the user experience as well as limiting its uses.”

The opening of FiveSixEight has been pushed back primarily due to a delay in the delivery of concrete for the bar itself, which will be the longest student bar in London when completed, as well as the necessity to remove a water main and fire hydrant that had been installed when the building was first constructed. The Union said “The delay in removing this has largely been due to the nature of the water main and the necessity for Thames Water to action this removal which has taken an unprecedented length of time.”

The Union has stated that the delays are regrettable and disappointing, though they have had no financial impact on the Union over and above the original project costs.

The delayed opening of the two venues has not affected Welcome Week, though major changes were forced to be made including the erection of a transparent marquee in Beit Quad, allowing all to see the debauchery from within. The Union bar is open as usual.

Opinion amongst fresher’s has been generally positive, with the acknowledgment that construction projects typically face inevitable set-backs and that the Union appears to have done enough to address the situation, most importantly with plenty of cheap booze still available.

Though perhaps Tarquin, a SciComm, summed it up best when saying “It really doesn’t matter when the club is ready - Crazy Larry’s is still open and there’s nowhere better to get sloshed, have a bloody good time, and see oodles of skirts.”