Con Magees, Glenravel GAC revealed very ambitious plans to develop their current home ground, Fr Maginn Park into a Centre of Excellence in a multi phase, multi year development. The plans were presented at an event last Thursday night where around 250 locals learned details of the project which includes two new pitches, ball wall with 3G training area and a new complex housing team gym and indoor 3G training area. The Club has recently acquired 14.5 acres of land adjacent to their current location and that land will be developed over the coming years to include all of the above.
Aodh O’Loan, Club PRO was MC for the evening which started with a song from Con Magees Scór Ballad Group followed by a video recital of a poem “The Hills Above Glenravel”, penned by former Club President Shaun McLaughlin. Aodh then introduced Club Chairman Ian McKeown who outlined in detail why the extended facilities were required to meet a rising demand for training and matches from the 34 teams the Club fields across all four codes. The pitch booking calendar shows an average of fifty bookings per week, every week from March through to end of September. Dessie Higgins, Club Vice Chairman then outlined everything that had been achieved in the past eighteen months to get to where The Club can now start putting realistic plans together. Dessie was involved in the recently developed Sports Complex and was drawing on that experience to help launch this project. He introduced the development at a high level which was largely driven by public consultation feedback from a “Have Your Say” event held a few months back where the local community got their chance to explain what they felt was needed in any major new development.
Dessie then introduced Eoighin Farren of Farren Architects and Ciarán Hanna of Hanna + Hutchison Consulting Engineers who described the project in detail outlining the challenges they faced in coming up with an overall plan. They described various different iterations they had considered before settling on the final version of an overall plan. That was then followed by a three minute flythru video giving a bird’s eye view of the new development from many angles. Club Chairman, Ian McKeown rounded off the evening with a few words as brochures, outlining the development were distributed to the assembled crowd. The brochures were created by Ronan McCann of Black Advertising. Finally just enough time to watch the flythru video one more time as the excited locals enjoyed light refreshments, highly energised by what they had just witnessed.
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