I love looking at the quirky industrial details of the building at Firefly Cafe. And of course, when I returned to Toowoomba in 1987 and completed a furniture restoration course in the stripped out main auditorium of the Empire Theatre, I was thrilled when the 'outrageous' decision to spend $11 million dollars on rescuing the crumbling building won through. The Empire is a brilliant, functional theatre. In fact, when touring shows are playing in Brisbane and Toowoomba, my sister chooses the Toowoomba option because the show will just be so much better due to the wonderful acoustics and the human scale of the auditorium to the stage.

The transformation of the Margaret street church into quest serviced apartments is a great example of taking something old and historic and repurposing it for future use. This could happen with the rail yards providing all the heritage buildings in the area surrounding this are kept and repurposed as opposed to being knocked down.

I think the city centre is starting to show true potential in the fact the number of cafes popping up everywhere are important for tourism and entertainment. The new building attached to the historical church on Margaret has character and charm and display the old with new. Something industrial and hip about it. There is lots going on and I am happy for the future of Toowoomba moving forward to show of it history by highlighting old building and keeping the character and charm. We need to keep these interesting buildings of history to have something wonderful to showcase to the future of tourism and sustainability. Lets not be to full of concrete and be the same as other cities.

Thanks everyone for your comments so far. It really is great to see everyone interacting with this project and sharing what they love about our city. The Empire Theatre is a great example of innovative reuse. Keep the comments coming :)

I agree with below - I was so relieved when TRC decided to restore the beautiful empire. That precinct is just fantastic. And such a boon to the city. I don't know if this counts here, but I also want to thank TRC for having enough vision to allow the "first coat" project in the city (I think it was called?) where some of our most dreary walls got some wonderful artworks added to them...just beautiful, funky and fantastic

Definitely the Empire Theatre Precinct. This is a fine example of using an existing site and respecting and building on its character. It is now in danger of being over developed and Council needs to shift focus to the PDA.

The Empire Theatre stands out. Both the main theatre and the chapel next door are great examples of preservation of features without sacrificing usability.