News / Ashton Gate
Building to begin in 2025 on delayed Ashton Gate Sporting Quarter
Building work is likely to start in 2025 on a new sports and convention centre, a four-star hotel, flats, offices and a multi-storey car park in south Bristol.
They are all part of Ashton Gate Sporting Quarter whose development, due to financial reasons, goes hand-in-hand with the construction of 500 new houses at Longmoor Village on land between Ashton Vale and the Long Ashton park and ride.
A legal challenge from waste company ETM whose recycling plant overlooks the proposed Longmoor Village site had delayed the start of the projects but their opposition – related to any newly built homes close to the plant being inconvenienced by noise which it generates – has now been dismissed by the High Court with no further right to appeal.
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The ruling means that the project team behind the Sporting Quarter has been reconvened, with bosses at Bristol Sport – the umbrella group behind Bristol City, Bristol Bears, Bristol Flyers and Ashton Gate Stadium – hopeful to be able to break ground soon.
Ashton Gate Stadium chairman, Martin Griffiths, said: “I’m delighted that the ruling in the High Court means that two very significant development projects for Bristol can finally be restarted.
“It has been hugely frustrating to have these multi-million-pound investments into south Bristol so delayed but we are pleased that Mr Justice Lavender dismissed the case and we are now able to pick up where we left off a year ago.
“We have now restarted the project team for the Sporting Quarter and hope to break ground next year.”
Planning permission was granted in August 2023 for the 5,000-seater sports and convention centre and hotel to be built next door to Ashton Gate Stadium the other side of Marina Dolman Way from the Lansdown Stand.
It would become a new permanent home for the Bristol Flyers basketball team as well as being able to host numerous other sporting and non-sporting events.
Bristol Flyers CEO Lisa Knights said she and the Flyers family “cannot wait for it to get started”.
Knights, who is also communications director for Bristol Sport, said: “Since 2018, when these plans were first unveiled, the sport of basketball has grown massively in the UK.
“With sell-out crowds consistently at our current home of SGS College Arena, having a bigger, purpose-built venue will ensure the financial sustainability of the Flyers and an exciting future for basketball in our community and the South West.”
Main image: Bristol Sport
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