NEW Cherries owner Bill Foley has wasted no time making good on his promises for the delivery of a new training ground facility with fresh applications submitted.
Early construction work on AFC Bournemouth’s new multi-million-pound training facility is ongoing at the former Canford Magna Golf Club, with previous structures on the site demolished and land levelled off.
After work on site restarted in the summer following pandemic and relegation related delays, fresh applications have been submitted to BCP Council for a temporary building along with provision for car parking, pedestrian paths and lighting.
According to planners, the temporary building will allow Cherries officials and staff to work at the site as soon as possible while construction work on the eventual main pavilion building continues.
New chairman Foley himself has stated how the facility will take “a few years” to complete.
In its latest application, planners Savills said: “AFC Bournemouth requires the modular building for a time-limited period of up to five years, within which time it anticipated that the club would have built all or the majority of the wider training and academy complex.
“At the end of the five year period, or when the main building has been constructed (whichever is the sooner), the modular building and associated works would be removed from the site to make way for the laying out of a grass pitch.”
One pitch at the training facility has already been completed and is being used by some of the academy teams, while an indoor pitch facility is under construction.
Planners added the temporary main building will provide “interim space including changing facilities, a kitchen, medical room and associated office space to enable AFCB academy staff to relocate to the Canford site and for players to train to a standard necessary of a Premier League club”.
They added: “[The building] has been sensitively sited and designed taking into account the needs of the end users, access, ecology, neighbouring land uses and the character of the area.”
When complete, the 57-acre complex will bring the Cherries first team, development squad, academy and pre-academy training operations and facilities into one location.
It will offer ten full-size pitches, three junior pitches, an indoor artificial playing surface, an outdoor artificial playing surface, medical, fitness, sports science and rehabilitation facilities, administrative space and a press conference theatre.
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