Work on multi-million pound Outdoor Sports Centre regeneration begins

Morgan Sindall is set to begin delivering the redevelopment of Southampton City Council’s landmark £36 million Outdoor Sports Centre project, following the successful completion of enabling works in March.

Thanks to funding from the Levelling Up Fund, Southampton City Council, and the Football Foundation the improvements will begin on site on Monday 16 June.

This represents the first major phase of the comprehensive redevelopment works that will transform the long-established sports centre; a cornerstone of Southampton's sporting landscape since 1938. The much-loved sports centre is vital to providing people with access to a range of health and wellbeing activities, community engagement and more much.

Morgan Sindall has been appointed to carry out the full works of this ambitious project that will create a state-of-the-art facility, updating the existing sporting amenities in addition to providing brand new recreational and sports facilities for years to come. The improvements include:

New Community Hub

The new two-storey Community Hub building will provide two covered netball and tennis courts, a gym and fitness suite complete with accessible changing rooms, flexible space for sporting clubs and the public to use, and a cafe with landscape seating terrace including a balcony.

New Family Zone

The former Boating Lake will be transformed into the new Family Zone to provide skateboarding facilities, a cycling pump track, play equipment and a picnic space in a landscaped setting.

Athletics

The new Athletics facilities will include a new grandstand with storage facilities. A new pavilion will provide additional space for club, registration and scoring rooms together with toilets and a first aid room.

Alpine Snowsports Centre

The Alpine Snowsports Centre will benefit from a new ski lodge with a reception, changing facilities, kit storeroom and toilet facilities. There will also be a new learner slope, resurfacing of the ski slopes with new lighting.

Football

The sports centre will benefit from the addition of three new artificial grass football pitches, one for 11 a-side and two for 9 a-side matches, alongside the existing two junior with improved drainage.

Parking

A new landscaped woodland car parking will be created with 275 spaces parking spaces including disabled and electric vehicle charging provisions. In total there will be 20 disabled car parking spaces at the sports centre.

Cricket

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

Hockey

The two existing all-weather hockey pitches will benefit from upgrades including lighting and storage.

Cliff Kinch, Area Director for Morgan Sindall Construction in the South, said: “It’s a real honour to be a part of this important project for the local community. Our work is vital in turning Southampton City Council’s vision for this new facility into reality and it's great that we can now start on the main delivery of the project.

“Our team is extremely dedicated to delivering a facility that not only strengthens sporting infrastructure, but creates lasting, meaningful opportunities for local communities to thrive, stay active, and improve their wellbeing for a healthy future.”

The sports centre will remain open as much as possible whilst the work is carried out and updates about the closure of specific facilities will be shared online via Morgan Sindall’s microsite. The work to the Outdoor Sports Centre is due to complete early 2027.

Procured through the Pagabo Framework, the design team is made up of Planning Consultant, Vail Williams; Architects, Architecture PLB; Landscape Architects, Dutch Landscapes; Alan Wood Partners, Structural & Civil Engineers; Cooper Homewood, M&E and Project Management and Quantity Surveyor, WT Partnerships.