Fund raisers are celebrating today (Friday) after being awarded a £499,358 grant towards building a new community facility on the site of the town's crumbling scout hut.
The news from the Big Lottery Fund in Wales comes after five years of hard work by volunteers at the Welshpool 1st Clives Own Scout Group, and follows an award of nearly £300,000 given by the Welsh Government last year towards the £800,000 proposed cost of the multi functional facility.
“We still have some funds to raise but this is wonderful news for the town as a whole,” said Farrell McManus from the Group. “We will put the job out to tender in about a month’s time with a view to breaking ground in July. We are told it will then take around 10 months to complete so we are looking at around May 2014 for it to be ready for use.
“There has been a tremendous amount of hard work from a dedicated group so I’d like to thank everyone for their efforts which have proved worthwhile. It has been a long, hard project and we hope the business community will also get behind it.
“We want this new facility to be a model of how to build a modern community centre. It will be flexible and adaptable for a range of uses. It needs to be sustainable with low overheads to attract a wide range of community groups for educational, community support and social activities.”
The centre will adopt the latest environmental and energy saving techniques and has the goal of attracting 1,000 new people through its doors in its first three years of operation.
Facilities will include a main hall (which can be divided in half), office space as well as a training standard kitchen. It will be constructed on the site of the current scout hut which has fallen into disrepair.
MAIN PICTURE: Owain Betts