Manchester City Football Club has announced work will soon commence on a ground-breaking new Football Academy, and BAM has been chosen to deliver it. This is what the club is saying: This is a landmark project for Manchester City. City is to build a state of the art youth development and first team training facility on an 80 acre site adjacent to the Etihad Stadium. BAM, a leader in sustainable construction and part of Royal BAM Group, will begin work on the plot, which forms part of the Etihad Campus, in the coming weeks and are due to complete the project in time for the 2014/15 Premier League season. The building of the Academy, which will provide a centre for up to 400 young players as well as housing the first team training base and the Club’s operations functions, follows four years of extensive research and planning by City across five continents and more than 30 elite sport development centres.
The City Football Academy will include the following: · A new Academy for up to 400 young players with classrooms for 200
· On site accommodation for junior and senior players
· 16.5 football pitches, 12 of them dedicated to players aged from 8 to 21
· A state of the art first team building with changing rooms, gym, refectory and injury and rehab centre
· A 7000 capacity stadium for youth matches
· Staff offices and a dedicated media centre
· A bridge linking the site to the Etihad Stadium and the rest of the Etihad Campus
Ian Fleming, Director at BAM spoke of his motivation for getting involved with the construction of City Football Academy. Fleming has been in construction for nearly 30 years and the chance to lend a helping hand to unemployed people in the region has been a huge draw to the project. “We recognise that East Manchester has a very high unemployment rate in terms of the youth in the area and this is one particular area that we’ll be looking to target,” Fleming revealed. "We’ll be working with East Manchester regeneration, City in the Community and the Prince’s Trust to enable us to hit the targets that we need to help those people." BAM, a leader in sustainable construction, will begin work on the project at the Etihad Campus in the coming weeks. Construction is set to complete in time for the 2014/15 Premier League season. It’s taken four years of research and planning for BAM to come to the position that they are in now where they’re ready to execute their plans. BAM Chief Executive Graham Cash explains why his company was chosen. “Our customers value BAM because our people do whatever it takes to deliver our customers’ expectations,” he said. “We are delighted to be part of the team that will deliver the City Football Academy and we will work hard to play our part in delivering MCFC’s vision of both developing the players of the future and helping to regenerate the community of East Manchester.”
