News Articles in the category 'Development'

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Fundraising is moving forward but painfully slowly.  Had very welcome donations from The Bernard Sunley Charitable Trust and Thames Valley Police, putting our new total to raise at £90,000 but with time running out it is looking increasingly desperate that we are going to be able to create our training rooms this year but at least we will have fabulous new loos, showers and changing areas - which let's face it are rather crucial!

All the development here at Longridge are "new for old", so before we can build a new building we have to knock one down of equal footprint.  In order to build our new training centre, we have sacrificed the Rifle Range.  Howard's Shed becomes the new bosuns store and Simon will be found doing an impression of an icicle in his new workshop in the compound (very bracing for him).  We will be down one lecture room over the winter, which may cause some logistic issues but nothing hugely intelligent people like us can't solve (!!) with a bit of creativity.....

As well as knocking down the rifle range, Shorts Services are digging up the concrete of the boat compound, so that we can start building our Giant Team Swing, which should be available in January and Mark is creating a Go Kart track for our new Go Karts.

I will try and remember to post regular updates here (if you don't see one for awhile, send us a nag) with pictures but we hope to start building the training centre in November with it completed by June 2010.  We are still £200,000 short of the final amount for this building  - so don't stop nagging folk for their financial support.  The additional cost is to equip the first floor and build additional disabled facilites - so if you think of anybody that might be able to help fund this, please let Amanda know.

So, with the wonderful grant from Sport England the building of our training centre can go ahead, which means that by next May we will have fantastic new loos, changing rooms, showers and training rooms.  And fundraising for the visitor centre and car park can now begin in earnest - wouldn't it be fantastic if we could build these autumn next year?

For full details of our new buildings can be seen in the Longridge cafe and reception - pop in anytime.

The refurbishment to our boathouse is completed and it is stunning.  The building gives us 19 single rooms, with washbasins and very swanky shared washing facilities, with a lounge and kitchen.

Our thanks for making this happen go to The National Sports Foundation, Mike & Penny Taylor and Family, Julie Record & Family and of course Carlton Barnard, who has been donated to us by Skanska to project manage our development plans and a good chap to collar if you'd like to see the designs for our future building projects.

The new boathouse accommodation was officially opened on Monday May 4th, with our seasonal team moving in the following day and now destruction of the horrible caravans can begin.

Where the caravans are we are planning to convert into over-flow parking and a games area - hopefully with a Go-kart track, if we can tempt local businesses to each sponsor a Go-kart that is!!!

Work started immediately after Christmas and our builders, Prestige, have been working a 6-day week to meet the deadline of 13th April for completion.  As of 6th March we were on target to achieve this deadline - which is quite an achievement, considering the centre was flooded for a week!

Once the building is complete, we will finally be able to destroy those horrible caravans and open up the garden at the back of the boathouse as an additional (and much needed) campsite.

We are celebrating the news that Sport England have chosen to support our development plans for the centre with a £1.1million grant which will enable work on our new training centre to go ahead.

This will be a beautiful building, housing new loos, changing rooms and showers on the bottom with training rooms with river views and balconies above.

Work on this building will start in October 2009 and we hope to raise sufficient additional money to build a new visitors centre and reconfigure the parking at the same time, giving better access and movement around the site.  To achieve this we need to raise another £500,000 by September.

If you would like to see the drawings for this building and how it fits into the overall improvement of the site, please contact Amanda at amanda.foister@longridge-uk.org or pop into reception when you are next at the centre.Below is an initial artistic impression of the new training and visitor information centre.