Te Manawa, The Hub at the Whangarei Town Basin, will be even more welcoming to visitors when a number of finishing touches are completed at the front of the building in the next eight weeks.

Last year the former Hubands building was converted into a multi-purpose facility providing not only top-notch visitor information and a comfortable place to wait to catch buses, but also ready access to Whangarei's award winning Art Museum.

The project has proven a success on all fronts, with great flow through of visitors and locals.

Numbers visiting to the gallery in the first nine months are triple those recorded in a year at the Gallery's former location in Cafler Park.

The gallery facilities are also providing a much better environment for the protection and preservation of the art itself.

However, there has been some criticism on the windiness of the site for people coming and going and waiting for buses, issues which Council believes will be resolved when the second phase of works scheduled for this year are complete.

Already an 'airlock' has been installed that can be used to block the worst of the bad weather as people enter and exit the building, and work is about to start on a glass and steel canopy at the front of the building, to provide shelter for people walking into Te Manawa, and boarding or alighting from buses.

WDC Economic Development Manager Pete Gleeson said the canopy would be completed by Labour Weekend.