Representatives of Alfred McAlpine’s special projects division told analysts at the stadium in Robin Park, Wigan, that it planned to build 13-15 indoor five-a-side football complexes on brownfield sites, based on the Wigan model.
One such complex is under construction at the Trafford Centre in Manchester, another is pencilled in at Derby and a third is planned for Glasgow. The Wigan Soccer Centre, on the same site as the stadium, contains 11 football pitches, changing facilities, a sports shop, a fast food outlet and a licensed bar.
Richard Baldwin, managing director of the special projects division, said: “We would hope to be building more Soccer Centres with JJB.” An Alfred McAlpine spokesperson said: “There will be further opportunities if these prove successful but that is far as we have got at the moment. Until the first one is up and running, no one wants to move too quickly at the moment.” The two companies want local authorities to give them cheap leases on brownfield sites. The plan is that McAlpine will build the centres for JJB, which will pocket the revenue. Each complex will be fronted by a JJB sports outlet and have a licensed bar.
“Its very simple,” said one analyst. “McAlpine will build a big tin shed, JJB will charge £40 an hour per pitch and after playing football, the punters can go shopping or go straight into the bar and gulp down a few glugs of the good stuff.
“It’ll be better than the coke machine and bloke selling bootlaces that you’d get if it was run by the council.” Analysts believe local authority involvement will help speed up planning permission. “It’s making good use of a piece of crappy land,” said one.
The centres will consist of a steel portal metal-clad frame structure on a piled raft ground-floor slab. McAlpine told analysts that the centres could easily be converted into warehouses or factories if the schemes did not take off. “McAlpine will build stronger floors to allow for the higher structural loads of heavy machinery. That’ll be the back door to get out if it all goes wrong – and it seems a very smart thing to do,” said one analyst.
The Wigan stadium, which cost £25m, opens in the first week of August. The Soccer Centre opened this week. The overall cost of the project was £38m.
