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Alliance Leisure partnered with Active Stirling to future-proof one of Scotland’s most successful leisure destinations resulting in over 1,500 membership sales in just three months.
When The PEAK launched in 2009 following a £27.3 million investment, it represented a new era for Stirling’s leisure provision and charitable trust, Active Stirling which was formed in 2006 and delivers sport and physical activity on behalf of local authority Stirling Council. Replacing the former Rainbow Slides facility, the development was a deliberate departure from the traditional local authority leisure model offering a remarkably wide range of facilities and the ambition to create a genuine community destination where people felt they belonged.
Sitting at the heart of Stirling Sports Village, The PEAK has been huge success story. Since opening it has consistently attracted between 2,000 and 2,500 visitors every day becoming one of Stirling’s top three visitor attractions.
However, this success has brought new challenges. Originally designed to accommodate around 3,500 members, The PEAK had grown to serve more than 8,000 members and the existing gym and studio space were struggling to meet increasing customer demand.
For Active Stirling, increasing participation and membership is fundamental to delivering its charitable objectives. Every customer helps fund programmes that tackle inequality, improve health outcomes and remove barriers to sport and physical activity across Stirlingshire.
Active Stirling needed to solve these challenges. Having previously worked with Alliance Leisure through the UK Leisure Framework(UKLF), owned and managed by Denbighshire Leisure Ltd (DLL), on the refurbishment of an 11-a-side pitch, Active Stirling once again partnered with the leisure development specialists through the UKLF, on a £2.45 million project to accommodate growing demand and future-proof the facility.
A specialist delivery team brought the project to life, including Thomas Johnstone Ltd as main contractor, with support from CD Architects, Bellrock, Struer, Wallace Whittle, ABT Safety and Hutchi.
Drawing on its extensive experience in leisure development and asset optimisation, Alliance Leisure worked with Active Stirling to identify how the existing space could be transformed to increase capacity without compromising the broader facility offer.
Research showed that the nine court sports hall at The PEAK was running at just 59% occupancy. By repurposing three of these courts, Alliance Leisure was able to introduce a new mezzanine structure, doubling the size of the first-floor gym to 200 stations. It also created two new purpose-built studios on the ground floor bringing the total number of studios at the centre to six. This intelligent use of space enabled the introduction of modern fitness equipment and flexible studio environments, significantly enhancing the overall customer experience without the need for new build expansion.
Matt Bunnell, CEO at Active Stirling, said: “Alliance was a natural choice for us because of their expertise and construction specialism. They brought innovative thinking to the project and really understood the complexity of what we were trying to achieve. In all my years of working on large scale projects, I’ve never seen a project receive such positive feedback. It’s been phenomenal.”
The new studios and extended gym have allowed the trust to expand its programme of classes and fitness opportunities for people of all ages and abilities.
Active Stirling already delivers approximately £7.5 million in social value, measured by 4Global. With the help of more than 600 volunteers, the organisation delivers a vast range of programmes aimed at tackling barriers including age, gender, geography, health and economic deprivation, from free extracurricular programmes in schools and employability initiatives to targeted barrier breaking interventions for underrepresented groups across Stirlingshire.
In addition to contributing to their social value output, the 9-month construction project immediately started delivering commercial returns for Active Stirling. In just three months, The PEAK had gained1,500 membership sales. Today, membership exceeds 9,000, making The PEAK independently verified as having the highest membership for a public sector single site in the UK and one of highest in Europe. The centre is now on track to reach 10,000 members in the next six months.
You can view the full case study on the Alliance Leisure website here.
