NEW OPENING
Ian Barclay re-visits Harlow to
witness the remarkable transformation of leisure provision in the town and
experiences its newly opened £25m leisure facility HARLOW LEISUREZONE I
n many ways Harlow in Essex is the spiritual home of Torkildsen Barclay. My late but great business partner, George Torkildsen, was
the first manager of the first purpose- built UK leisure centre here in the 1960s. When, inevitably, his leisure expertise
was sought on a wider stage, he set up his international consultancy, based at the same Harlow Sports Centre. In the early 1990s I was director of leisure for Harlow before moving into the private sector, then joined George in the consultancy partnership in the late 1990s – again in Harlow. We moved away from this location
many years ago, so it was with a great deal of interest that I returned to find out what changes had occurred in the area in the intervening period. Harlow is a new town, built after the
Second World War to ease overcrowd- ing in London and is now home to some 80,000 people. For many years it was at the forefront of leisure provision. The Harlow Sports Trust, established in 1959 to develop and manage the sports centre, worked hard, and largely suc- cessfully, to be creative in its use of the facility over a 40-year period; but outside of this, many of the other local authority
centres became tired and dated. As time moved on, Harlow remained in its bubble, and the developments taking place elsewhere in the country left it largely in a leisure backwater.
A sporting heritage Now the old Harlow Sports Centre is dis- appearing; its site sold for housing as well as the council’s swimming pool. However, both of these have been replaced by a stunning £25m wet and dry leisure com- plex at a new location in central Harlow. The Harlow Leisurezone is part of a
wider regeneration of Harlow – bring- ing new homes and leisure facilities to the town. Entitled the Harlow Gateway project, the £50m redevelopment is a partnership between Harlow Council, The Homes and Communities Agency, Harlow and District Sports Trust, the East of England Development Agency and the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG), which contributed £11m to the project. The main focus has been the reuse of
the original Harlow Sports Centre’s 30- acre brownfield site for 530 new flats and houses. In order for this to occur, not only was a new leisure centre re- quired to replace the old facility, but
also a new football stadium and athletics track which had previously been located on the sports centre site. In order to commence the develop-
ment, a new 3,000-seat, £3m football stadium with conference and enter- tainment facilities, improved changing facilities for players and officials, flood- lighting and a high grade playing surface was completed in the summer of 2006 on the outskirts of the town. A £1m, county- standard, eight-lane athletics track was also provided as part of a wider, sepa- rately funded sports development at Mark Hall Community School and Sports College and opened in 2007. Partnership investment is also going
into the regeneration of playing pitches around the town. The relocation of these facilities enabled development of the site to commence, with the old Harlow Sports Centre being kept operational
36 Read Sports Management online
sportsmanagement.co.uk/digital
Issue 4 2010 © cybertrek 2010
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