Space age look for £13m centre

With its floor to ceiling glass and smooth lines, this is the first glimpse of how a new “space age” £13 million leisure centre, planned as part of a £167m revamp of Bilston, could look.

The steel and glass building – described as a “centrepiece” – which would replace the town’s existing centre in Prouds Lane, will have a gym, squash courts, a pool with eight lanes, a sauna, sports hall and studio rooms. Work on the leisure centre is set to start in September and be complete by the end of 2009 under the first phase of the urban village. 

Councillor John Reynolds, leisure boss at Wolverhampton City Council, said today: “It’s a very space age design and we hope that this will attract families from all over the Black Country, from Sandwell, Walsall and Dudley for a day out.

“This will be a centrepiece for the Bilston Urban Village and I hope all the other developments will look this good. We are very excited about the progress we have made and are really going for value for money. 

“The building will have a design life of 60 years, so that means the bricks, mortar and walls will last 60 years before it needs more work. It will be superb and of real benefit to the city.” 

Council chiefs say the design is only a draft at this stage and the final version may look different once work begins. But they have promised the building will come with a 60-year warranty and will need no structural work for decades.

The new centre will go on land off the Black Country Route between Morrison’s supermarket and Bilston High School. 

Part of Pinfold Street car park may be built on in the future as part of the creation of a link between the village and the High Street.

But town centre chiefs said they would look at providing adequate parking elsewhere before any building work started.

Dudley Street in Bilston closed north of Carder Crescent in March for two months to allow a section of the road to be lowered in preparation. 

The work is to enable it to be “tied in” to the new link road built from Dudley Street across to Bankfield Road.