Southampton’s Outdoor Sports Centre

The new ‘hub’ will provide a space for sporting clubs and the public to use and will include:

• Lobby, main reception, lift and stairs
• A café, social, and multi-use space
• Landscaped seating terraces and balconies
• Changing rooms for teams and officials
• Changing rooms and toilet facilities
• Administration Offices
• Gymnasium and fitness suite
• Multi-purpose room suitable for meetings, group exercise and wellbeing classes

A new covered facility will incorporate at least one tennis and netball court, which will replace existing outside courts and will encourage year-round use for tennis and netball players. The covered tennis and netball courts will sit alongside nine existing outdoor tennis courts and seven existing netball courts.

The hub proposals will provide additional tree planting to the front of the hub area. There will be landscape terraces at the ground floor and first floor levels of the hub which will include areas of green and brown roofs.

Due to a shortage of all-weather pitches in the city, the sports centre will benefit from one new 11 v 11 and two new 9 v 9 floodlit football artificial grass pitches. There will also be a retention of two junior and five mini-soccer grass football pitches with improved drainage.

The replacement of grass pitches with floodlit artificial grass pitches will allow for increased year-round usage and will provide additional capacity to allow for increased use by juniors, women, and girls. The football improvements will provide a legacy from the UEFA Women’s EUROs held in July 2022.

The two existing all-weather hockey pitches will benefit from upgrades which will enable additional training. To help support local hockey clubs and bookings, facilities including lighting and storage will be improved. The new ‘hub’ building will also provide hockey players with a social base.

The Snowsports Centre will benefit from a single storey ski lodge with a reception, changing facilities, kit store and toilet facilities. There will also be an extension to the learner slope and resurfacing of the ski slopes with new ski lifts and lighting.

The former Boating Lake area will be transformed into the new Family Zone facility which will be for all ages and abilities to enjoy.

Facilities of the Family Zone will include a children’s play area, and a new cycle, skate, and skateboard provision.

To allow for Southampton Athletics Club to not only continue to attract large numbers of people of all ages to participate but also to host events and compete on a national level.

There will be a new 240-seat grandstand with storage facilities. A new athletics pavilion will also incorporate a club room, registration and scoring rooms, a first aid room, and toilets.

The remaining four cricket pitches will benefit from upgraded wickets and improved drainage, along with new artificial wickets to both adult cricket pitches.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) also known as solar panels are proposed to contribute towards the development’s electricity demands. An air source heat pump system is also proposed to contribute towards the development’s heating/cooling demands.

There will be improved pedestrian and cycle routes across the Outdoor Sports Centre. In addition to Southampton’s Bike Park which was recently upgraded, there will be a cyclo-cross, woodland bike trail, and cross-site cycle routes added to the cycling facilities at the sports centre.

To help with on-street parking issues surrounding the sports centre, a new landscaped woodland car park will be created with 275 spaces parking spaces with disabled and electric vehicle charging provisions.