Client
Blackburn Rovers Football Club
Size
12 acres approx.
Local Authority
Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council
Culture, Leisure, Sport and Tourism
Key Project Information
- Ongoing significant masterplanning exercise within a constrained inner urban area, supporting one of the oldest football clubs in the Country, drawing together key stakeholder requirements to ensure that the Club continues to contribute to the needs of the local community.
Blackburn Rovers Football Club (BRFC) commissioned our expert team to assist it in the preparation of a masterplan for the growth and regeneration of their land interests at Ewood Park. The Masterplan for ‘Destination Ewood’ will be used as promotion document for the club to express their ambitions for Ewood Park and its surrounding area and could potentially be developed into a formal supplementary planning document (SPD).
BRFC have long held aspirations to develop ‘Destination Ewood’. This is essentially a masterplan to draw together the key drivers for future development at Ewood Park, in terms of assisting the community in being a more integrated part of the club both on match days and non-match days, to consider the overarching socioeconomic strategies that apply to the area whilst also identifying and shaping the planning policy requirements to assist in generating sustainable income for the Club.
There was a large amount of information that has previously been collated for different projects within and around Ewood Park, but without any reference to one another. There was also a wide collection of potentially interested parties, which Pegasus engaged with in preparing the background information. Pegasus Group sought to knit all of these different proposals and available evidence together to form an initial visual wish-list for the future of the site.
The initial Masterplan briefing document covered the initial background research into the site’s strategic background and the Council’s Corporate Plan, context to the site and the surroundings, initial socio-demographic information, planning policy background for the site and an initial outline of the objectives of the Masterplan.
Identifying a number of key development and spatial objectives was required to commence a vision for Destination Ewood.
We also set out the range of evidence base documents and studies which would be required to further progress the masterplanning exercise. This is currently underway working with both BRFC and the Council.
The initial background research undertaken by our team also informed the representation to the Local Plan seeking to enhance the planning context so the ambitious ‘Destination Ewood’ could be successfully developed and delivered.