Second stage of Big Lottery Fund bid and planning application submitted

In February this year Community Gateway successfully bid for £50,000 from the Big Lottery Fund to develop architectural and business plans to fully redevelop the Grange Pavilion.

This summer, using the feedback and ideas Grangetown residents have shared over the past five years, Community Gateway and partners submitted the second stage of the Big Lottery Fund bid and applications to several other funders, to help realise the vision of a long term community-led facility.  A planning application, developed with Dan Benham Architect, IBI group, and CDF Planning, was submitted in October proposing the complete renovation of the Pavilion, and a one-storey addition at the east edge of the Bowls Green, creating a facility with a café, three bookable spaces, toilets accessible to park users, and community gardening plots around a green. The proposals are available for planning consultation through Cardiff Council and are live on the Cardiff Council website.

We need your help, skills, expertise and time!

All of this is only the beginning, and we still have a long way to go to secure all the funding and to get this up and running as a community-led facility.  If successful, a community management board, which has started to form, will take on a 99 year lease under a Community Asset Transfer, with handover support from Cardiff University.

We still need your help, and the project is still very much open to anyone who would like to get involved. If you have any skills, expertise, or time to offer us, please do get in touch!  In particular, we would welcome further support in facilities management, gardening and landscaping, business development, legal advisory services, finances, community fund-raising, communications and marketing, volunteering at regular or pop-up events and activities, and anything else you can offer. If we successfully fundraise for the development of the Pavilion, we will also welcome any interest from craftspeople, suppliers, and local businesses who would be interested in finding out more about being involved in the construction phase.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to the many hundreds of you who have been involved, volunteered, led activities, and shared your ideas and visions for the Grange Pavilion.  If you’d like to find out more or get involved in any way, contact the Community Gateway team at communitygateway@cardiff.ac.uk, stop by the Pavilion on a Monday to speak to Ali Abdi, Community Gateway partnerships and facilities manager, and stop into the Hideout Café at the Pavilion to grab a great coffee/tea and to see what’s been going on so far in the Pavilion.