Mackay Entertainment and Convention Centre illustrates a simple response to functional requirements which belie a complex set of urban design challenges. MECC’s purpose is to enable Mackay to share in regional north Queensland’s growing appeal for business tourism. However, it differs from other city’s stand-alone facility being grafted onto Mackay’s existing multi-purpose centre. As such, one of our major challenges was how to generate a sufficiently distinct identity to entice custom to Mackay while also enriching a civic and entertainment precinct already functioning. Our approach was to reconsider the brief such that the existing and new buildings could function compatibly, and then to devise an architectural language that transmits memorable identity for business tourism attraction as well as enhances the wider precinct. Our solution is a deceptively simple yet potent new edge to the civic precinct, utilising slabs of timber and concrete to recall a great colonnade. This colonnade wraps around the new Centre to engage with the pathway system of both the existing facility and the precinct whole.