PLANS have been drawn up for a new training facility for Warrington Wolves Rugby League Club in Victoria Park.
The development would be to the east of the existing Victoria Park Stadium and would be a single-storey structure adjoining an existing spectator stand.
It would form part of wider plans to creat a new community centre of excellence for rugby league at the stadium.
The site forms part of the wider setting of the Grade 2 Listed Old Warps, a former country house, dating from around 1800, which is now a restaurant.
Planning chiefs have been told the listed building, some 175 metres from the site of the proposed new building – still retains elements of its original setting, but its surroundings are much altered and their character is now that of public park/sporting facilities and not a country estate.
As such there will be no harmful impact on the heritage value of the Old Warps.
The scheme, submitted by the Warrington Wolves Foundation, would involve the conversion of the existing stand under croft to a gymnasium and the erection of modular classrooms and offices to support the use of the site by Wolves when they are no longer able to use training facilities at the former Padgate campus of the University of Chester.
The Victoria Park site has been identified as the most suitable and sustainable in the borough.
It would enable the Warrington Wolve Rugby League Foundation to continue their community progress within the borough and to provide improved training and sports rehabilitation facilities for all of the teams that are associated with the Wolves and local stakeholders.
The proposals will now be considered by Warrington Borough Council planning officers.
Pictured below: The historic Old Warps building
3 Comments
and are the Wolves paying for the uplkkep of the public facilities including the churned up pitch
Money for Warrington wolves training facility ? YET no money for the modernisation of Broomfield s Recreation centre ?alot of brown envelopes being passed in the corridors of the town hall ??
I hold no brief for Warrington Wolves or WBC for that matter, but where in this report is there any suggestion that WBC is funding or lending money for this proposal? And mention of “brown envelopes” without any substantiation serves no purpose other to promote conspiracy theories. What I do question is, who has decided a listed building very near to the proposed development “retains elements of its original setting, but its surroundings are much altered and their character is now that of public park/sporting facilities and not a country estate?” Surely that is for the planning officers to consider and determine when the proposal comes before them. Not for others to set the decide any relaxations that should apply to the planners deliberations?