An emotional rollercoaster of a story that has seen a non league club dramatically turn around its fortunes with the help of the Buildbase renovation programme.
In 2019 Stowmarket Town FC scored one of the top prizes in the Buildbase £100K Transfer Deal – a renovation programme that enables non league clubs to breathe new life into their grounds.
Two years on, and working against the odds during the pandemic, the club has managed to totally transform their facilities at Greens Meadow with incredible benefits to both the community and the club’s future.
Their journey began with a five-year plan to bring the club closer to the community. ‘Build to grow to invest’ became their mantra. By building and developing the club’s facilities, they believed they could attract more community involvement, enabling growth that they could then invest back into the club.
More than a football club
With a 140-year history Stowmarket Town was well known locally as a football team, but that had a limited attraction.
“We’d been in the town all of that time, but unless you were interested in football, you didn’t come. We felt that if we could embrace the community, we could get more different people through the turnstiles. We started by giving everyone under the age of 16 free access to matches with parents paying £1. Then we saw the Buildbase competition and it was perfect timing,” explained one of the club’s directors, John Griffin.
John contacted his local Buildbase branch who helped with their application to the Buildbase £100K Transfer Deal. Stowmarket Town made it to the final three in the Buildbase FA Vase category, which concluded with a Dragon’s Den-style pitch day at Wembley Stadium where judges praised the long-term vision and ambition.
John said, “It was such a massive thing when we won. We were gobsmacked and emotional. We’d been here for such a long time and we wanted be somewhere to be proud of, that people wanted to come and see, and this competition enabled that. It gave us the massive boost we needed to finally realise our plans.”
Project in a crisis
Buildbase Stowmarket worked with the club on its plans. “We’d known them for a while and they were so good, so enthusiastic. They came down to the club, helped with measurements, gave suggestions and guided us in every way. It was important to us that we did a single project, we didn’t want it to disappear. But then we were faced with a national pandemic,” John said.
With everything in place, the project was scheduled to complete during summer 2021, yet no one foresaw Covid-19.
“In some ways it was beneficial to the project as we were shut so it enabled us to crack on. However, as the seriousness of the pandemic hit, we soon realised the devastating effect,” explained John. “At least six times, local people we were working with were off with Covid, which meant whole operations had to close. Thank goodness, everyone got through it.”
The project completed in November 2020 and the prize of £25,000 worth of building materials – from plasterboard, batons and timber frames to kitchen units, paving and paint – went a long way with renovation both inside and out.
Transformation
Outside, visitors are welcomed to the club with a shiny new Buildbase-named turnstile entrance. The path running around the edge of the pitch was transformed into a larger, landscaped community area. The sunny spot is equipped with a giant gazebo, BBQ and TV screens to watch the match, offering an area that can be hired out for corporate and family events.
Inside, the tiny committee room has been extended to seat 20 people, there’s also a small kitchen, white board and TV screen, making it a perfect facility for for training or meetings. Renovation also included plastering and decorating the dilapidated function hall and bar area and turning a small galley kitchen into a big commercial facility suitable for catering large events.
Everything supplied by Buildbase went to good use. A volunteer used the crates that stored the building materials to add wood panelling to the wall of the bar, creating an inviting area for visitors to relax before or after a game.
The whole facility is much more accessible with larger entrances and exits, handrails and extended ramps to reduce the incline, making it much easier for wheelchairs.
Vision to reality
The end result is a true testament to turning a vision into reality with Stowmarket Town already reaping the rewards of ‘Build to grow to invest’.
A family who hired the community area for a party spotted the committee room and now hires it weekdays for training adults with special needs including use of the commercial kitchen for cookery lessons.
Community groups use the space for charity work or regular meetings and the facilities are also being hired by other sports clubs, including a local running group.
“We are building our role in the community and we’re no longer known as just a football club. ‘Build to grow to invest’ has worked. We’re proof that investing in your facilities means that you’ll get more people through the door and showing them what else you can offer attracts them back for different reasons,” explained John.
“Once we got the families involved, who perhaps have their own businesses or help out volunteering, and they could see they could hire great facilities, they came back with their friends, families and colleagues. In the last five years we’ve gone from having 40 guys every Saturday afternoon to last season we were drawing in 380. At our level, this makes us one of the highest in the country.”
So, what for the future of Stowmarket Town? John said, “The big news is that the team looks like it will be promoted and semi-professional would be a major boost – a bigger draw with bigger crowds. Government rules allowing, we’re looking forward to lots more local derbies. We’re also on a big push to hire out our facilities and hope to hold large summer events when we can.”
The Buildbase renovation programme and lots of hard work have ensured that Stowmarket Town is buzzing with families and people of all ages. If you’d like your vision to become a reality, visit Buildbase.co.uk to find out more about the Buildbase Title Sponsorship of the FA Vase and FA Trophy.
Updates can be found by following @BuildbaseUK on Twitter, at Buildbase.co.uk or in branch.
