FROME Town Football Club will expand their stadium further after a £28,000 grant from Mendip District Council’s Local Legacy Fund.
The grant will enable the club to build a new covered area for spectators to stand at the Blindmans Brewery Stadium.
Community development manager, Gary Collinson said, “This is something we have been working on as a board for the past few years and now due to the generosity of this grant we hope to really be able to move forward – we can’t thank enough Frome Town Council, the Frome Renewable Energy Company and Mendip for their support in this project in getting the grant application written, submitted and now passed.”
The new covered area, which at the present time will not be terraced, will be situated opposite the existing changing rooms and as part of the stand it will also include solar panels which will have the added bonus of reducing the energy costs within the stadium.
Chairman of the club, Jeremy Alderman, who was equally thrilled with the latest development said, “The success of the grant was very important to this project and without it we wouldn’t have been able to go ahead.
“We will need to gain planning permission for the new stand and then, as long as everything is passed, we will be able to begin work which will really transform the stadium. As a board our number one priority off the pitch has always been the continual improvement of the facilities and this takes us a huge step forward to completing our plans, along with this helping environmentally with the solar panels.”
The Blindmans Brewery Stadium has had a major facelift over the last four years, with improvements carried out through community involvement in providing a new stand. This was helped by the Football Stadia Improvement Fund and a £50,000 competition win with the Football Pools that saw a 90-day transformation of the stadium, including a new 250-seated main stand and major renovations to the Venue & Sports Bar.
Managing director Ian Pearce added, “In terms of where we want to be, this will vastly reduce what is left to do around the ground going forward and we only have a couple of major projects left to look at, excluding the 3G pitch which is a stand alone project. One of those improvements the Supporters Club are already well into completing funding for. When everything is complete, the town will have a facility it can be rightly proud of.”
In total £43,000 went to community projects in Frome with £5,000 being awarded to Frome St John The Baptist PCC to install new windows as part of improvements to a community activities venue. £10,000 was awarded to Frome Selwood Tennis Club towards three new tennis courts to replace the existing deteriorating courts.
