How Warrington Youth Zone has come close to reality

In his latest column for Weekend, he talks about the 10-year battle to create a youth zone in the town

IN December 2008, I was interviewed for a role as senior manager and fundraiser of Warrington Youth Club at the Peace Centre.

During the interview one of the questions was, ‘how will you develop Warrington Youth Club into an OnSide Youth Zone?’.

After securing the role, I started in January 2009, soon after a range of meetings took place between a number of organisations including Warrington Borough Council and OnSide.

The concept of youth zones was evolving at this point and the infrastructure charity, OnSide was in its infancy having been established in 2008.

At this point there were four youth zones in development in Carlisle, Oldham, Blackburn and Harpurhey in Manchester. We continued to work with partners in Warrington and proposals were made for a number of sites including the car parks facing Central Station.

At this point none of the sites in Warrington were a viable option and as such the focus for OnSide needed to move to other areas.

Although some representatives from the private sector were focussed on providing a facility for the children and young people of Warrington which was on a par with that of Bolton Lads and Girls Club.

Chairman of OnSide Bill Holroyd kept a focus on Warrington and Nick Hopkinson, John Connell and David Moss, all avid supporters of Bolton Lads and Girls Club, joined the board of Warrington Youth Club. They brought a wealth of experience and motivation to grow and develop the organisation in line with the improvements they had experienced.

We spent the following three years developing Warrington Youth Club through a strong partnership with Bolton Lads and Girls Club and simultaneously searching for potential sites for Warrington Youth Zone.

In 2013 we were immersed in negotiations to purchase the disused Mr Smith’s nightclub, presenting an interesting challenge to OnSide of how to convert this part listed building to an iconic centre for children and young people. On April 14, 2014, our plans came to a shuddering halt as the building was destroyed by fire.

Plans were in place to use Mr Smith's

Not perturbed, we continued to search for possible sites around the Stadium Quarter; in 2017 Warrington Borough Council offered the site on Dallam Lane, next to the University Technical College by in 2017.

In May 2017 Warrington Borough Council voted unanimously to develop a youth zone for the children and young people of the town. We were overwhelmed to receive the news on April 25 that the site had been granted planning consent by Warrington Borough Council's planning committee.

Although this has been a long and winding path we anticipate the date in early 2020 when we are able to provide an iconic world class youth zone in Warrington.