Hearts get £6m sports village

HEARTS were today given the go-ahead to build a £6 million sports village on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

The development at Heriot-Watt University’s Riccarton campus will include a football academy, sports medicine and sports science centres.

There will also be two full-size football pitches, a training pitch and a synthetic pitch.

The main sports hall, which will house three five-a-side pitches, is almost 300ft long and 36ft high.

A spokesman for the club said that the benefits of the new facilities for Hearts were “beyond description”.

“Now that we’ve got it, were really pleased and excited that we can now go ahead with this project,” he said.

“Having these types of facilities will help us bring through more great young players and will also benefit students of the university.”

Heriot-Watt is a partner in the project, which should see the training pitches ready for use by September of this year.

The new buildings at the new facility should be in place by early 2003.

Hearts officials were confident of getting the green light for the proposal after applying for detailed planning permission.

Tynecastle chief executive Chris Robinson is known to be excited at the prospect of what he believes will be one of the first academies of its kind set up in Scotland.

Before the meeting, he said: “I would rather not say too much until detailed planning permission is granted but if we do get the go-ahead, the project will be one of the best and one of the first in the country.”

Hearts will pay the majority of the required money for the academy, with sportscotland contributing £1m and other grants expected to be utilised.

The footballing allegiances of city councillors were called into question at the meeting of the Council’s development sub-committee when they met to discuss the planning application today.

Councillor Steve Cardownie said he would abstain from voting on the application as he was a season ticket holder at Tynecastle.

He pointed out that a few years ago, Liverpool councillors had been severely criticised by the Local Government Ombudsman for granting permission to Liverpool Football Club to extend a stand.

Local residents objected to councillors who were season ticket holders of the club voting on the issue.

As well as providing training facilities for the football club, the centre will provide a teaching base for the university’s new undergraduate degree in sports science.

The committee was told that when the new degree was announced in October of last year, the university received 400 applications for 35 places.

Councillor Tom Ponton said Currie Community Council had objected to the proposal.

One of their fears was that it could lead to Hearts applying to build a 20,000-30,000-seat stadium at Riccarton to replace the existing ground at Tynecastle.

He was told by officials there was no proposal for a stadium before the committee “at the moment”.

Taken from the Scotsman