THERE was a lot riding on the Bournemouth International Centre when it opened to the public 30 years ago this week.

It had cost £18million and was intended to ensure that the town remained in the top flight of the UK’s conference resorts.

The mayor, Cllr Michael Filer, told the public at the opening on September 6 1984: “This is your centre: I invite you to come in and use it.”

And after years of controversy about the building of the centre, many thousands were to do exactly that.

The idea of building a new conference centre had been mooted as early as the 1960s. But the debate over building the BIC – or the West Cliff Conference Centre, as it was termed for many years – had really got going in the 1970s.

At a five-hour meeting in January 1981, Bournemouth council finally gave a conditional go-ahead to the company Module Two’s plans for the centre.

Ahead of that meeting, the president of Bournemouth Private Hotel and Guest House Association, Norman Adams, had derided critics who wanted to scrap the plans and extend the Pavilion instead. He accused them of supporting a slide into “Geriatrica-on-Sea”.

“Do we look to the future as a resort or meekly drift towards a town of rest, nursing and retirement homes?” he said.

When the BIC was finally ready to open, crowds gathered to see the two halls and indoor swimming pool that their rates bills had paid for.

Cllr Bill Foreman, who chaired the council’s BIC sub-committee, said the centre justified the council’s view that the town would stagnate without more investment. “Now it will enhance the town’s prosperity,” he said.

Council leader Cllr David Trenchard said: “It will lead our tourism industry into a whole new era.”

The centre already had major events lined up for the following year. It was expecting 7,000 young farmers, 6,000 members of the Round Table, 2,000 delegates from the Transport and General Workers’ Union and 4,000 from the Labour Party. The diary for 1986 already contained the Conservative Party conference, bringing 6,000 delegates.

“This will be the premier entertainment and conference centre in the United Kingdom and will benefit business and employment in Bournemouth,” said Cllr Trenchard.

Although it was designed primarily as a convention centre, the BIC soon began to eclipse the Winter Gardens as the venue for big name entertainment. A Johnny Mathis concert in its early weeks brought the town’s first BIC-related traffic chaos.

Over the coming years, the entertainers packing out the Windsor Hall would include Elton John, Sting, Wham, Take That, Oasis, Blur, Diana Ross, Cliff Richard, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.

The first political conference at the BIC was also one of the best remembered. Labour leader Neil Kinnock rounded on the militant tendency in his party, and in particular Liverpool council’s deputy leader Derek Hatton. Kinnock attacked “the grotesque spectacle of a Labour council – a Labour council – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers”.

The Conservatives became regulars in the conference diary, and Margaret Thatcher was in defiant mood in October 1990, just three weeks before being forced out of Downing Street. She derided Mr Kinnock as “the prime minister in waiting” who would be “waiting, waiting, waiting”.

When Labour returned under Tony Blair, the conferences had become huge, and so had the demonstrations outside – perhaps most notably, those against the ban on fox hunting and against the Iraq war. Defending his Iraq record in 2003, Mr Blair told the BIC audience: “I can only go one way. I’ve not got a reverse gear.”

The scale of events such as modern conferences persuaded the council that the BIC needed more exhibition space, leading to the controversial closure of the pool, with its popular wave machine. And by 2004, work was underway on an £18m upgrade which involved increasing the capacity of the Windsor Hall, enabling it to attract bigger concerts. In 2010, Bournemouth council handed the management of its entertainment and leisure venues to BHLive, a charitable trust.

Pat Coyne, director of venues for BHLive, has recently seen the BIC sell its highest ever number of tickets for a run of shows – 27,000 for seven nights of performances by comedian Lee Evans.

Cosmetics company Lush is holding a major product launch at the centre this week. The Police Federation held its conference there earlier this year, Nationwide Building Society held its AGM there, and both the Arts University Bournemouth and Bournemouth University have held their graduations there.

Conference delegates staying two or three nights will spend around £300 locally, Mr Coyne said. “The conference and exhibitions side of things probably brings in anywhere between £40m-£50m into the local economy through hotels, restaurants and people staying overnight,” he added.

As for entertainment, John Bishop, James Blunt, Diversity, Madness and Kaiser Chiefs are among forthcoming attractions.

My Coyne said of the BIC’s strategy: “Generally, it’s about keeping the BIC as the biggest and probably most successful venue on the south coast.

“Over the last three to five years, we’ve had a number of new centres that have opened up in city centres, but when it comes to the south of England outside London, we’re still the biggest venue and probably the most successful.”