Oldham’s Boundary Park will become a £70 million four-sport destination designed to pull 25,000 visitors through the gates every week under ambitious plans revealed Monday afternoon.

The scheme will graft an education centre, new rugby and football academy pitches, upgraded cricket nets, a netball court and, ultimately, a 3,000-seat arena for netball, basketball and wheelchair rugby onto the existing football ground. Darren Royle, chief executive of Oldham Athletic and the driving force behind the SportsTown project, told the launch audience: “Our dream is to have an arena here. And crucially, to have proper cricket nets in the town. The opportunity is to have 25,000 visitors a week here in the next five years.”

Oldham Council has already stumped up £6 million: £1 million paid for a new state-of-the-art astroturf pitch inside Boundary Lane stadium, while £5 million drawn from the government’s £20 million Community Regeneration Fund will convert the top floor of the Oldham Events Centre into a “world-class” learning hub. Council leader Arooj Shah said the complex would offer “an unconventional route” into nationally recognised qualifications for pupils struggling in mainstream schools and feed degree-level training in physiotherapy, mental health and sports science through partnerships with the Northern Care Alliance and several universities.

Project leaders now need to secure the remaining £64 million, mostly for the arena, from government and Greater Manchester Combined Authority grants plus private investors. Royle conceded the timetable is uncertain—“We’d love to have the arena in three years’ time, but realistically we’ve got to look at the funding”—yet insisted the finished development would help push Greater Manchester into the country’s top-ten sporting city regions and deliver “wide-reaching benefits” for local businesses and communities.

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