Meadowbank: Creating A Catalyst For Local Regeneration

By Lorna Baird, Associate at Holmes Miller.

British sports stadiums in the early ‘70s generally had to meet one overarching requirement – allowing spectators a decent view of the action, usually taking place on a single open field, with few frills attached.

Now, the blueprints for successful sporting developments have changed.

The biggest requirement now is for fully sustainable designs to help the UK hit its 2050 deadline of becoming a net zero economy. But more than that, the next generation of stadia and sport centres have to also offer much longer-lasting legacies for spectators and athletes, and for local communities.

Built to host the 1970 Commonwealth Games, Edinburgh’s Meadowbank isn’t just one of the Scottish capital city’s landmarks, it’s very much a national treasure.

Yet, after more than 50 years of active service it desperately needed to be modernised - to make it fit for purpose in a net zero world, and to ensure it can continue to host and train generations of athletes for many decades to come.

After three years of construction work, in close partnership with Edinburgh City Council and Edinburgh Leisure (the charity that runs the complex), the new £47m Meadowbank sports centre officially opened in July and has been designed to achieve high standards of sustainability and is fully accessible for elite sportspeople and members of its surrounding community too.

Inside and out, every effort has been made to embrace the very best practices in sustainable design and act as a lightning rod for the wider regeneration of the Meadowbank area of Edinburgh – a largely residential district just 10 minutes’ drive from Princes Street and Edinburgh Castle – in line with the council’s own longer-term ambitions, to cut carbon emissions, while improving the health and wellbeing of every resident.

Sustainability And Local Regeneration

The plans for local regeneration include delivering 600 low-carbon homes, with more than a third affordable housing, meaning every effort had to be made to ensure the new Meadowbank fitted seamlessly into that city-wide changing of the local landscape.

A great example of this connected thinking, for instance, was the new centres heating system, which is designed so it can also be connected to the District Heating network set to be built as part of those low-carbon new residential properties.

The centre’s green credentials are among the UK’s very best, including features such as a low velocity air displacement system, which creates a calm and fresh environment with low energy consumption, and HFO (Hydrofluro-Olefins) based chillers rather than conventional HFC (hydrofluorocarbons) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Since opening its doors in 1970, Meadowbank has defined the local area, so it was only right that any regeneration of it should also have a knock-on effect on everyone and everything that in the vicinity – in its case, it has to represent a strong visible commitment and future benchmark to local wellbeing and sustainability in the area.

Football And Stadium Facilities

Meadowbank, Scotland’s most decorated sporting venue, is the only venue to twice host the Commonwealth Games, in 1970 and 1986, where athletes took home a combined 31 medals including seven gold. The 1980 Olympic 100m champion Allan Wells spent his early days training days at Meadowbank too, as did the champion long-distance runner Liz McColgan.

While desperately wanting to hold onto its sporting (and entertainment) memories, we were also determined to deliver new excitement and pride across the local community, by ensuring its 2022 facilities continue to help propel future Scots athletes (and maybe even the odd rock star) to equally impressive results.

Although designed primarily as a venue for elite-level sporting competitions – there are now 16 new changing rooms, a medical suite, physio and drug testing spaces, for instance – it is also hoped the new complex will be equally embraced as a community hub, open to and valued by everyone.

We want more sports and participants than ever before to base themselves within its walls through creating quality spaces for use, including space using specialist acrylic surfacing for elite-level netball, an updated martial arts and dojo studio, and an 8-court hall featuring indoor seating for approx. 1,000 spectators.

The re-opening of Meadowbank also means a return home for FC Edinburgh (formerly Edinburgh City FC), after five years spent playing its home fixtures at Ainslie Park on the outskirts of the city in Pilton. Nicknamed ‘The Citizens’, the team won promotion in May so will be welcoming opposition from the updated Scottish League One for the first time.

The new 499-capacity grandstand will also serve as home to Hibernian FC’s women’s team for their Scottish Women's Premier League home fixtures.

Unlike the old days, when frost and rain frequently postponed or cancelled rugby, football or even athletics fixtures, to ensure bad Scottish weather can’t get in the way of athletic needs, two artificial surface pitch sizes have been laid within the outside arena. They are designed to both World Rugby and FIFA standards.

Meadowbank’s design and impact offers important industry lessons about the changing role of stadia in community wellbeing, and how to achieve it.

A clear alignment between the council client’s requirements and local low-carbon strategy, its set to drive local change, provide ample space and quality facilities for the city’s sporting ambitions, and make a guaranteed commitment to sustainability, components all of Edinburgh can be proud of for many years to come.