Two existing centres situated half a mile apart, the Jubilee and the Moberly Sports and Leisure centres, will be demolished and a new multi-use sports centre will be built at the Moberly site. The £17m new centre will be larger than the two existing centres combined and will be developed at no cost to the Council.
Under the terms of the deal Regen, which is the development arm of property company Willmott Dixon, will develop 120 new homes on two sites and the new leisure centre will be funded by the sales proceeds from those homes. The new homes will include 80 homes on Kilburn Lane as well as 40 homes and a smaller community sports facility on Caird Street where the existing Jubilee centre is located.
This type of land arrangement provides an innovative funding method to the council from private sector developer partners and is set to become more widespread, Willmott Dixon said.
“With both current leisure centres in need of modernisation, this solution provides a bigger, state-of-the-art property for the local community offering high quality sporting facilities for many generations to come along with much needed quality new homes," said Regen chief executive officer, Andrew Telfer.
“This is an excellent example of how Regen is able to work closely with the public sector to creatively fast-track, design, fund and deliver much needed community facilities through intelligent use of land assets in a difficult economic environment," he said.
“Few councils are in the position of being able to build multi-million new sports facilities in the current financial climate," said Westminster councillor Steve Summers. “But together with Willmott Dixon, we look forward to working on proposals which will create a £17m sports centre for residents of Queen’s Park together with a smaller sports facility at the Jubilee site. This will all be done at absolutely no cost to the taxpayer, so represents incredible value for money," he said.
The Council and Regen have carried out public consultations on the proposals earlier in the year, engaging with key residents groups, amenity groups and community groups. Feedback from the consultations showed that the biggest area of opposition was the loss of the Jubilee Centre.
“We understand the concerns of the community regarding the loss of facilities at Jubilee and hope that the proposed new community sports hall – which has been prompted by feedback from local people - will go a long way to answer those concerns," said Summers. “We will continue to work with local people to ensure their views are taken on board as the proposals develop towards the planning stages,” he said.
Regen will now start work towards gaining planning approval for the scheme and, if granted, expect to begin work on the site in 2013.
