The big guns behind The City of Lancaster Gymnastics Club are celebrating this week, as building work on their purpose-built premises at Lancaster Leisure Park is finally complete.
The club teaches trampolining, tumbling and a wide variety of gymnastic disciplines at the University of Cumbria’s Sports Centre on Bowerham Road. Due to its success at both local recreational and competition level, the club has been looking to expand to create more space and meet demand.
The new timetable at the bespoke premises will complement the existing classes at the University, enabling the club to increase the range and number of classes on offer across both venues.
Affiliated to “British Gymnastics”, the club already offers classes from pre-school fun to national competition level gymnastics.
Now settling into their new premises, the club will offer increased tumbling and trampolining for older children, while parents can accompany their own mini movers to sociable baby gym or baby yoga classes and who knows which enthusiastic toddler could be a future Olympian?
Helping to facilitate such success and leap to even greater heights, the exciting new venue will have a specially sprung floor, mirroring competition conditions. The more senior competitive squad, which already competes internationally, will move across to the new gym in their quest to bring home more trophies. Also, to the relief of all, the bespoke equipment here can be left out, rather than hauled away after classes.
Club Founder Marie Gardner explained; “Rather than all move across from the Uni, splitting the teams fits in better and gives everyone more room at each venue. We’ve been looking for another venue for a while now as we wanted to keep it local. Lots of parents bring their children to us after school and at weekends, so we wanted something easy to get to with lots of free parking. The Leisure Park give us that.”
The new gym will be a neighbour of the popular Turning Point Theatre Arts Studio, run by Gail Johnstone, expanding the number of individual attractions at the Wyresdale Road site to eleven. Lancaster Gymnastics sees its’ disciplines as complementing Turning Point’s drama, music and dance; and the other benefits at the park, such as ease of access, ample free parking, and welcome coffee and cake at the onsite restaurant, could be just the ticket for chauffeuring parents!
Allan Blackburn, owner of the leisure park said “It’s been exciting seeing this project come to fruition and just 12 months on from our initial discussions, the gym is now ready. This new development reinforces our wish to provide something really special for the people of Lancaster and we are pleased to say, that we are already working on our next project”.
