An £8m controversial, futuristic attraction has welcomed its first customers.

The Sutton Life Centre this week opened its library, to replace the former Ridge Road facility, which closed to make way for the project.

The life skills centre, which has a £190,000 bill to finance its first seven months because of dismal early booking figures, also welcomed hundreds of people over the weekend for a sneak preview.

More than 400 visitors attended the Open House event to take a tour of the venue, which includes a virtual reality room and climbing wall and an eco-garden project.

The centre will be officially opened next month.

Deputy manager Tina Stevens said: “It was great to get the doors open and let people have a look around.

“We gave a number of tours and got some really positive feedback from residents, they were very impressed by what they saw.”

The life skills centre, which should cost Sutton residents nothing, needs at least 48,000 pupils – about 450 schools – to turn a meagre £9,500 profit.

So far the council has booked only 42 schools – just 2,780 pupils.

However, Sutton Council’s ruling Liberal Democrat party remains confident the centre will succeed.

The library will be open an average of 42 hours a week longer than the former Ridge Road library, because of self check-out machines.

Councillor Graham Tope said: “This new and improved library will benefit the whole community with its wide range of classes, books, DVDs and computer access, which will be available every day.

“The environmentally designed building is really inspiring, calm and comfortable – it will be a great place for people to come to learn.”

The proposed “unique learning environment” is tipped to be the first of its kind in the UK.

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The Life Centre on Sutton Common Road is certainly a striking building of glass, metal and wood. Its exterior, church like – which is presumably why many of those involved in the project are praying it pays its way over the coming years.

The front of house is a fairly unremarkable library transferred from Ridge Road and now open for business. But it is in the back rooms where the magic can be found.

As the marketing department have found out, the Life Centre is a concept better seen than explained and our visit last Thursday endeavoured to discover whether the hype lived up to the reality.

To explain it simply, the Life Centre is like a space age version of those Government health warnings about matches featuring the funny cat and the idiot boy.

Except this version has flashing lights, moving images, clever interactive scenery, and covers a heck of a lot of ground in one visit.

From domestic abuse, bullying and alcohol, to respecting your elders on public transport and tackling fire in the home, it is an A-Z of the perils of growing up.

It is an impressive building, with sets depicting a street scene, a home setting straight out of the Ikea catalogue and a surround screen cinema set up with various scenarios.

You can see how the core audience of children will enjoy the visit and the way it is presented, and hopefully learn something along the way.

Now we await to see if the concept will generate the cash needed for self sufficiency.