We’re excited to say we’ve appointed Rigg Construction (Southern) Ltd as lead Contractor to build our new climbing centre and skatepark facility in Chippenham with the construction work commencing from Monday 23rd November. It is estimated that the project will take approximately 46 weeks to complete, with the new facilities open to use by the public by early 2022.
Rigg were selected by our board of trustees after a competitive tendering process. They have been trading since 1989 and have successfully delivered a range of new build schemes including commercial, community and school projects in Wiltshire and surrounding counties.
Our £2.7 million project includes a climbing centre and skate park for Chippenham. The climbing centre plans include interior & exterior climbing walls, bouldering, changing areas and indoor and outdoor café areas. The whole plans include a new skatepark, landscaping and picnic benches.
“We are fortunate to be in a position to create this unique and exciting new facility for Chippenham and the local area, and continue our long history of support to the Town. It’s taken us longer than we’d wanted to get to this point, but nobody could have foreseen this year’s pandemic. We took the opportunity to revisit some of the project costs, without losing any of the essential quality of the design, and are looking forward to working with Rigg to turn our vision into reality.”
Don Steele, CBLC Chair of Trustees
Rob Elkin of Chippenham firm, Elkins Architects, has designed the unique, purpose built climbing centre, the surrounding landscaping and led the design team working on the project. The project is being managed by CMS Project Managers & Surveyors Ltd. The climbing centre will be owned by our charity but we will be working with a partner who will be running the whole activity centre, including the café and skatepark area.
We are delighted to have support of a £100,000 grant from Sport England towards building the climbing centre and £200,000 from Wiltshire Council towards the skatepark design and build.
The skate park has been designed by Bristol Skatepark design specialists, Canvas, who have produced a bespoke design in consultation with a local skater’s user group. We are very grateful to all the skaters who have been involved in this project from initial ideas through to giving feedback on more detailed designs. A big thank you to the local skater’s community who have been involved in our journey so far.
The skatepark will provide an exciting long-awaited new facility for the young people of the town. It will be adjacent to the climbing centre and will include additional landscaping and seating. The skatepark has been designed to cope with flooding in extreme weather and be self-draining. Giraffe Engineers are providing structural, civil and specialist flood risk design for the whole project.
Members of the public will still be able to access parts of the field and walk through to our land at Westmead Open Space during the construction period but we encourage everyone to follow the notices and advice provided.
We will continue to provide regular updates to the project here on our website and also over on our social media platform so do check back here to find out the latest information. Why not also follow our social media on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with the latest news?
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