£400k to be spent refurbishing St Margaret's Pastures

[davieG]

Merc

A £400,000 plan to create five-a-side football pitches has been unveiled.

Four floodlit pitches are set to be built at St Margaret's Pastures Sports Centre, near Abbey Park, Leicester.

An existing artificial surface will be converted and three five-a-side pitches will be built.

The gym at the centre, in St Margaret's Way, will be closed to make way for new changing rooms.

A bar at the site, which is currently closed, will be refurbished to offer big-screen sports coverage.

At the moment there is one centre in the city which caters for five-a-side games. The council said the redevelopment would help to ease the demand for pitches.

Assistant city mayor Piara Singh Clair, sport and leisure spokesman: "This development will bring the most up-to-date facilities to those who currently play at the centre, as well as for the many we hope our facilities will attract.

"We will be offering these facilities at value-for-money prices because we recognise that sport can be expensive."

Work on the facilities will begin next month and the council hoped the redevelopment would be completed by January.

Staff and customers are being informed of the work and meetings are being arranged with groups which use the centre and will be affected by the disruption.

Councillor Clair said: "The work will inevitably cause disruption to visitors but we will be discussing the arrangements in detail with people affected by it and will do everything possible to ensure the inconvenience is kept to a minimum."

[adam1]

So the knee/leg grazing/cuts surface is to be replaced? That can only be a good thing!

I presume they will replace it with the artificial turf stuff that they had in the middle.

[jonthefox]

I used to love playing there, in the days before kids and 20 fags a day.

[Bert]

I'll call, raise and beat Anyone's graze/cut/gash from SMP.

[AoWW]

I'll call, raise and beat Anyone's graze/cut/gash from SMP.

ewww, I remember you posting the pictures of that.

[Ashley]

I'll call, raise and beat Anyone's graze/cut/gash from SMP.

I remember that massive hole in your knee from the U21 V O21 game. Horrible it was!

[SystonFox]

Good move. Nice to see them doing something to get the "obese kids of britain" out again, and when they say value for money it'll be interesting to see what that price is as most AstroTurf/3G pitches charge through the roof.

[Trav Le Bleu]

I shattered my thumb playing in goal at SMP. That taught me not to put my hand in the path of the ball.

It still went in too.