The importance of place
Image: Brierton Lane, West Hartlepool
In the 1990’s my team West Hartlepool Rugby Club sold their home ground Brierton Lane. Brierton Lane had become the place that mum, dad and I would spend every other Saturday cheering on West. It wasn’t a great ground but it had what a rugby club needed to function; club house, pitch, stands and changing facilities. It worked. The rugby wasn’t always great but from the age of about 10 West Hartlepool had become a big passion of mine and on Saturday afternoons at Brierton Lane I felt connected to something.
The game of rugby had gone professional a few years previous and West were yoyoing between the top two leagues. Funds from the sale of Brierton Lane were invested into the team with the ambition of cementing West in the top league and securing professional rugby in this part of the North-East. West’s first season away from Brierton Lane was a ground share with local football team Hartlepool United FC at Victoria Park. Despite the injection of cash into the first team the season went badly and West were relegated, the start of a decline which saw West plummet through the leagues. Today they play in Regional 2 North and are once again an amateur team. Brierton Lane is now an estate populated with 60 houses.
It would be a stretch to say that my experience of West Hartlepool selling Brierton Lane shaped what we are doing at Sport+ but I do reflect on my own lived experience of how things can go badly wrong when sports teams fail to respect places like Brierton Lane. People build a profound relationship with the grounds, stadiums and venues in which they go to watch sport. Changing, modifying, expanding or moving away from these are important decisions for elite sports teams to make and they need to be done so with long-term strategic plans in place.
In the 1990’s, the advent of the Premier League and the birth of Sky Sports led to the rapid growth of football as a highly lucrative sport with a truly global audience. Such a boom saw a spate of new stadia projects across the UK as teams including Bolton, Coventry, Derby, Middlesbrough, Reading, Southampton, Stoke and Sunderland relocated from stadiums in central parts of towns and cities to sites on the outskirts where land was more readily available and cheaper. The design philosophy underpinning these projects prioritised functionality, increased capacity, and a stadium that could be easily switched on for match day and off when not in use. Fast forward to today and all but Southampton now sit outside of the Premier League, occupying stadiums with an average attendance below capacity and based in locations that are physically disconnected from their towns, cities and people. Sport+ know of more than a few of the above clubs that are looking at ways to reconnect their disconnected 90’s stadiums back into the local community - with some looking at how to optimise and utilize surrounding land for development.
Image: Riverside Stadium, Middlesbrough FC
At Sport+ we believe that the fundamental principles of longevity in sports stadiums sites and training ground developments should unlock opportunities for these projects to be anchors which stimulate wider investment and growth in the local area. We are working on a number of projects which are exploring the opportunity to bring forward urban transformation extending the impact of the regeneration beyond the stadium or training ground to create new districts and communities. From our experience of working with and speaking to owners, directors and CEO’s at teams throughout the pyramid of UK sport - there is an increased focus on how they can use their built infrastructure (stadia and training) in a more sustainable (financially, socially and environmental) way.
I hope gone are the days of my Brierton Lane experience where the crown jewels are sold for short-term cash injection and instead clubs are thinking long-term. Encouragingly this long-term thinking isn’t just related to the health of the club and is increasingly related to the health of the place and it’s people and clubs are cognisant that they can’t do it alone. Instead they must work in partnership with communities, local councils, the private sector and maybe even national government to ensure that the best outcomes for club + place + people are achieved.
