'A New Spin On What An Event Could Be': Melbourne's Timber Yard Unveils Its Massive $3 Million Transformation
The Melbourne venue is now "bigger, bolder and more versatile than ever," with its huge upgrade ready for concerts, corporate events, and more.
The Timber Yard (Credit: Supplied)
Ask any Victorian music fan and they'll likely agree that one of the most versatile and inviting venues around Naarm/Melbourne is that of The Timber Yard.
One of the bigger drawcards to the seaside locale of Port Melbourne, The Timber Yard is an unassuming beast, boasting 6,000 square metres of usable indoor and outdoor area and hosting some truly stunning events on its grounds in the past few years.
Alongside corporate events which have included those put on by the Big 4 banks, launches for Chemist Warehouse and Mecca, and even launches for Ferrari and Lamborghini, The Timber Yard has also been a massive drawcard for music-lovers as well.
Since its inception, some huge music names have also been on-ground as well, ranging from the Ministry Of Sound to a little world-beater known as Fred again.. – undeniably setting The Timber Yard apart as one of the places to be in Melbourne.
Now, The Timber Yard has announced a massive $3 million makeover, including aesthetic upgrades and a huge overhaul to its audio/visual system.
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As Director Gideon Luber explains, The Timber Yard's journey has been a massive one that reaches back close to a decade when he, along with his brother Asher and their business partners Adam McKenzie and Joshua Paneth, began setting their sights on launching a music festival.
"We were looking for a really unique location to run the festival; the Petting Zoo Festival," he recalls. "We looked at a bunch of really unique sites across Melbourne and someone told us about this dilapidated industrial site in Port Melbourne at Plummer Street."
Despite working with council to get the event across the line, their plans were thwarted, but the potential was clear. "We realised pretty quickly that the site had to be a permanent music venue."
"While we ran our festival at another site that year, we never lost sight of 3511 Plummer Street, which soon became The Timber Yard after we spent three years building it, permitting it, and liquor licensing it," Luber recalls.
"As soon as we finished building it, we started getting inquiries for corporate bookings and we realised that there's a massive market in corporate."
As Luber points out, roughly 10-20 annual music shows were planned for the venue in its early stages, though that's since skyrocketed to between 30-40% of the venue's entire events being music related, with the remaining 60-70% being focused on the corporate side of things.
Though The Timber Yard officially cites early 2019 as their opening date, their first event was the 2018 AFL Christmas Party. Starting strong with a major event, it's clear that the potential for large-scale happenings and global brands being on-site presented itself quickly, but this was a far cry from what Luber and the remainder of the team had in mind.
"On the music line of things, we were extremely grassroots," he explains. "We did not have delusions of grandeur. We really saw it as being true to its really desolate form, which was a rusted out roof, a massive open air warehouse.
"And we thought, 'This would be perfect for music shows.' We brought down every promoter in Melbourne to come have a look at the space and everybody fell in love with it, but really at that moment in time, that's all we thought it was ever going to be."
For The Timber Yard's team, things began to kick off after Luber and one of his business partners simply headed over to LinkedIn to download emails en masse. Sending out thousands of emails with digital renders of the still-desolate location, interest swiftly increased and soon the team were fielding offers from large corporate clients, from "the biggest banks, to investment firms, and to automotive companies."
"They were starting to inquire about booking their corporate events with us, and we were like, 'Holy shit, we did not see this going in a corporate direction,'" Luber recalls. "One of the biggest points of feedback was that all these corporates have been going to these ballroom style convention centres, grand Palladium-style venues, and they wanted something that was really industrial, uniquely Melbourne.
"And that's the void that The Timber Yard ended up filling. We have all the bells and whistles now of a Palladium, but we really have a unique Australian Melbourne feel, which is industrial-meets-premium venue."
But what is the key to The Timber Yard's success? Is it the quintessential Melbourne feel to it all, or is it the way that the team behind the scenes run things? As Luber explains, it's a mix of all facets working in tandem.
"The sheer flexibility of our place comes to mind," he explains. "Our huge outdoor area, our huge indoor area, that weather contingency capability, and the vicinity to the city – being 10 minutes from the CBD and also acoustically being able to be at concert level volumes 10 minutes from the CBD is incredible upside to us.
"Our team is a testament to the incredible work," he adds. "We have really invested in bringing together a quality team of operators, and that's everything from general management, operations teams, sales crew, event staff, and down to like our bartenders and venue management staff."
For Luber, The Timber Yard's approach to offering a memorable experience is thanks in part to their dedication to taking on their feedback and ensuring they can create not just outstanding events but also positive relationships with their partners, brands, and clients.
"There's not one other venue in Melbourne like us that can do music festivals into a conference for L'Oreal into an automotive launch for Ferrari into another music festival day after day," he explains.
"It's pretty wild and I still have those 'pinch me' moments when we have an incredible brand working with us," he adds.
On the music side of things, the caliber of acts having performed at The Timber Yard is an entirely new level of 'pinch me' moments altogether.
Alongside the aforementioned Fred again.., there's massive acts such as Four Tet, Folamour, Basement Jaxx, STÜM, Young Marco, Honey Dijon, Meduzsa, and more. And of course, that's just a list of acts that Luber is able to mention as having graced the stages.
However, with the nascent $3 million makeover The Timber Yard has now undertaken, there's bound to be countless more huge names on the bill in the future.
The new makeover includes a sleek new blackout aesthetic and expanded amenities, alongside full climate control and an impressive audio-visual system. Described as one of the "most advanced in-house production set-ups in the state," the technical specifications include over 100 moving spot and wash fixtures, a 9m x 3m high-resolution adjustable LED screen, D&B Audiotechnik distributed audio, and plug-and-play technical infrastructure.
For Luber, it's simply a continuation (albeit a costly, though worthwhile one) of the venue's ethos to continuously reinvest.
"It's literally been that way since we opened the doors," he asserts. "In 2019 year on year, we've made upgrades, we've made improvements and this year was no different, although it was significantly larger than other years.
"It's really about keeping us in tune with what people want. We listen to our clients, we listen to our music promoters and the feedback that we have gotten from shows."
While this has included going from the use of portable toilets for music shows, to a costly investment of permanent facilities, it's now included $1.5 million of a new audio-visual system to ensure The Timber Yard are operating with top-of-the-line gear for any event – music or corporate.
"We blacked out our warehouse, we painted our old containers from red to a full blackout of the room, really elevating the space," Luber explains. "We installed automated blackout drapes, so by the push of a button you can completely black out the space in the middle of the day.
"It was really exciting to see how, in the last few months, the venue completely changed. And it's been incredible, the feedback we've had from all of our music promoters and our corporate clients, just to see how we've elevated the space significantly."
For the gear-heads among us though, the question does remain in regard to what $1.5 million can get you in terms of a new audio-visual system and what it means for the venue itself.
"That includes a brand new d&b Line Array system, coupled with a plethora of subs in the bottom, and we've got over a hundred moving fixtures in the roof," Luber explains. "Previously we were looking at about 33 moving lighting fixtures in the roof, and that's been upgraded to about 100-plus all brand new.
"We've got a distributed audio roof grid system that really distributes the audio around the room evenly, we've upgraded all the acoustic paneling in the roof. Previously we had a tin roof, now it's got two layers of 200mm acoustic paneling inside the entire roof, which really keeps the sound really warm, crisp, and doesn't reverb or bounce around the room."
Other upgrades include the massive video screen, which – as I suggest – will be enough to ensure a quick return from Fred again.. in no time.
"It really is world class," Luber notes. "I have to shout out Front Of House Productions, who are our new AB partner who we brought on this year. They are synonymous with large-scale touring in Australia for major events, festivals, and artists, and we've worked with them over many years at The Timber Yard, and we asked them to, to partner with us in being our exclusive provider of AV in the venue."
With all these new additions to The Timber Yard, what does Luber and the rest of the team hope that the venue represents to not just its attendees, partners, clients, and prospective performers, but the wider entertainment landscape in the country?
"We want to put a new spin on what an event could be," Luber says. "People obviously think of us as a premier event space, holding incredible events and incredible shows, but I'd really like us to play a major role in the Australian event and venue market where our name is a household name to a degree in terms of music shows and music venues – which it already is becoming.
"That's the real goal," he says. "And also to give back to the Australian event music scene by putting on amazing shows for our guests and ticket buyers."
But, what does the future hold? With a plan to reinvest in The Timber Yard each and every year, good things are always in the pipeline, but what can we foresee in the immediate future?
"I like to focus on the here and now," Luber admits. "I know it's probably an adverse opinion, but we feel we're still in our infancy. 2019 was our first year and we didn't do much that year, but then we went into two-and-a-half years of COVID and then coming out of COVID, we've really only been operational for two-and-a-half, maybe three full years.
"So I really think we're still in our infancy, and working with those major brands, those big artists – really grassroots Australian artists as well – is really important for us.
"That's kind of what I want to be doing more of in the next year or two years," he continues. "And who knows, we may be looking at another Timber Yard in another state. Those are kind of the major plans, but I won't reveal too much."
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
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