29 Apr 2014
Former sports minister pushes Olympic Legacy scheme for Don Valley redevelopment
BY Tom Anstey
Richard Caborn, formerly MP for Sheffield and sports minister, has urged for an Olympic Legacy Park be built on the site of the former Don Valley Stadium.
Caborn, who served as minister of sport between 2001 and 2007, met recently with Lord Sebastian Coe and the Olympic Legacy Cabinet Committee to provide an update on a proposed development for sport, health sciences and wellbeing.
The £40m project features a 25,000-seat multi-sport community stadium, with an administrative quarters for the National Centre for Sport Exercise and Medicine as well as a technical college and engineering faculty for Sheffield Hallam University.
The proposals – backed by Sheffield City Council, the city’s two universities, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the Local Enterprise Partnership and Sport England – will also include the refurbishment of Woodbourn Road athletics site, with the latter being run by Sheffield Hallam.
Already Sheffield has been given £10m by the Government for Olympic legacy developments at Graves and Concord, along with a new swimming pool at High Green.
Some elements have been secured, although a council member told Leisure Opportunities that it was “very early days with many hoops to go through,” before the full redevelopment on the stadium part of the proposal gets underway.
Work starts in the autumn on a nursery, primary and secondary schools for 1,222 pupils. Funding has also been secured for a floodlit artificial pitch which would be used by students of the University Technical College linked to the stadium.
One bid for a university technical college specialising in sport and health was rejected by the Government. Another, led by Sheffield College, will be made next month (May). It is also intended that the stadium will be used for basketball, rugby union and rugby league.
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