PASTURES NEW

To be known as “The Gateway”, it is proposed that the expansive site close to the Seven Towers Roundabout will have a staggering range of services and facilities including a drive-thru restaurant, petrol station, food store, family entertainment centre & coffee shops, a health & wellbeing unit including a GP surgery, and small industrial units.

There is also a plan to enhance and recreate Ballee Burn on the site to encourage the return of fish stock and wildlife to the area and to open up a health highway through the resulting open park/wetland.

This will be overlooked by a lakeside restaurant and also by rentable log cabins with a 200-seater wedding and funeral chapel serving as a focal point close by.

As the plans stand all those facilities lie on just one side of the site which is to be accessed off Ballee Road East and which links up to the Ballee Way.

The facilities earmarked for the rest of the land include a hotel, a Compassion Ministries Education & Training Centre plus accommodation for 100 students, a social care village featuring a 40-bed residential nursing home and independent living accommodation units for able pensioners, a girls’ home for single parents and a nursing care unit plus an independent living unit for people with special needs.

There is also scope on the fringe of the land for social affordable housing and to the west of the site, off Ballee Way, an area has been set aside for a large public community play park. The plans also include a full size 3G pitch, 3G training pitch and eight-lane athletics track.

At very heart of the site is the new Green Pastures church building which is to be flanked by The Wash Basin with a community leisure centre complete with gym.

The church, with seating for 4,250, is to be built over three levels each of which have open-plan malls with the ability to service and feed up to 1700 people and there is also to be a GP kids facility over two levels.

It is envisaged that retail aspects of the proposals such as the hotel will be released to private operators.

It was also revealed to Press on Friday morning that full detailed planning consent for the Church, the wedding & funeral chapel and road network would be submitted to the Planning Service early next month and that an outline submission would be made for the rest of the site at the same time.

It was pointed out that the unveiling of the plans not just to press but to local residents via a two-day public exhibition in Ballee Community Centre on Thursday and Friday was the culmination of eight months of preparation, consultation and planning since the land was purchased last autumn.

Project Champion and director at HPA Architecture, Warwick McCullough described ‘The Gateway’ as “one of the most unforeseen and imaginative proposals to engage the Planning system in recent years” and he said that feedback from the exhibition in Ballee had been “positive” and that while some “micro” issues had been raised he considered them to be “resolvable”.

GP’s Senior Pastor, Jeff Wright, said of ‘The Gateway’: “It is ambitious but there is definitely some reason we had to go to this piece of land.

“I believe with God nothing is impossible and if he wants to to do this, he will pay the bills.”

He also said the project was unique, explaining: “We are bringing a church, we are bringing employment opportunities, opportunities to get back into life - all on one site and accommodation and care are part of that.”

While Pastor Wright is looking forward to the church moving to the new site in three years, it is expected that the full development at ‘The Gateway’ will take at least eight years to complete if it gets the green light from planners.

It was also pointed out that the necessary relocation of GP church from their current site in Galgorm will provide some of the space essential for expansion required by Wright Group within their critical three-year timeframe as it continues to deliver on recently secured contracts.

Pastor Jeff revealed that the Wright Group will also invest in the construction of a facility for expanding its business at The Gateway, delivering skilled engineering apprentices and employment and providing opportunities for trade with adjacent premises in Pennybridge.