Work begins on Forest Green Rovers ‘Eco Park’

Article posted by Coliseum, February 21^st, 2023

Image: Forest Green Rovers

Work has begun on the new eco-friendly stadium for Dale Vince’s Forest Green Rovers F.C. (UK) which will increase the capacity of the team’s grounds to 5,000 and construct a training complex for the League One side. To reflect the club’s Green credentials, the new stadium will be built almost entirely out of wood.

‘GloucestershireLive’ stated that drilling rigs have been erected at the new Eastington site so that foundation work can get underway on the environmentally-friendly stadium. The development has been dubbed ‘Eco Park’, a vast multipurpose site funded by the Stroud (UK)-based energy company Ecotricity.

The Forest Green Rovers Football Club is a professional football club based in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, England (UK). The team competes in EFL League One, the third tier of the English football league system, and has played their home games at The New Lawn since 2006, when they moved from their original home at The Lawn Ground.

There will be a speaker from Forest Green Rovers F.C. at the Coliseum Summit EUROPE to be held at the Twickenham Stadium, UK, on March 22^nd-23^rd, 2023.

The 5,147-capacity New Lawn, also known as The Bolt New Lawn for sponsorship reasons, is a football stadium in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire (UK). It has been the home stadium of League One club Forest Green Rovers since 2006.

Dale Vince, Chairman of Forest Green Rovers F.C., is a British ‘Green energy’ industrialist. He is the owner of the electricity company Ecotricity.

‘GloucestershireLive’ further stated that when the work has been completed, the Eco Park will be a complex containing both indoor and outdoor pitches, a new training center, a 1,700 space car park, a hotel, and a 70-bed care home. There will also be around 500 trees and 1.8 km of hedgerows planted at the site to promote biodiversity.

To mark the start of the building process, Dale Vince said on social media, “We’ve started work on our new all-wooden football stadium at Eco Park with a series of boreholes to get an understanding of the ground conditions so that we can design the foundations, small for now – but it’s definitely a start.”

Ecotricity estimates that this development could plough £150m a year into the local economy, while generating around £2m in business rates from the site to the Stroud District Council, though it will move the Green football team from their current Nailsworth site to just off Junction 13 of the M5 near Stonehouse (town in England).

The new wooden stadium has been designed by the Stirling Prize-winning architect Dame Zaha Hadid to compliment the club’s existing ecological focus, with its current ground powered by renewable energy, recycled rain water and serving vegan food to players, staff and fans.

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