Former Peterborough Greyhound Stadium on track to become new commercial hub
Peterborough’s former greyhound racing stadium seems on course to be converted into a commercial hub more than five years after its closure.
The once family-owned Greyhound Stadium, which in its heyday attracted thousands of people to its racing and social events, is now the subject of a detailed planning application to build 17 warehouses of various sizes on the site.
The plans for the 3.85 hectares site at First Drove, Fengate, have now been officially submitted by Peterborough Sports Stadium Ltd to Peterborough City Council more than five years after the venue was shut.
The application seeks to provide 14,778 square metres of high-quality, flexible employment space and involves the construction of six units of 714 square metres, plus another six units of 1,622 square metres and five of 12,442 square metres in size.
The proposed units will seek to meet demand for a range of uses from commercial, business and services to general industrial and storage and distribution.
According to a planning statement submitted with the application by consultants DLP Planning, the development will create 65 jobs during the construction phase and about 210 jobs when the units are completed and occupied.
The site currently has parking space for 100 vehicles and it is proposed to increase that to 310 vehicles plus 155 cycle spaces.
The existing site access point onto Fengate will be retained and upgraded to serve the development with a second point of access onto First Drove also kept as an alternative access route.
The development also inludes a variety of native flora and fawner to enhance the local environment and help attract wildlife back to the site.
Approval in principle for the redevelopment of the stadium was granted by the council in April last year – 17 months after the plans had first been unveiled.
Why was the Greyhound Stadium closed?
The previously family-owned Peterborough Greyhound Stadium had been a popular venue for greyhound racing since the 1930s.
It opened in 1931 and was extended in the late 1980s to include a new grandstand and restaurant and in 2003 with new seating areas.
However, the social distancing restrictions imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic proved too much for the stadium as a hospitality and leisure business that relied on people mixing together, and it closed on May 19, 2020.
Its closure triggered a search for a new use for the venue.
Its sale by the Perkins family, which had owned the stadium since 1945, was announced in May 2021.
At its peak, the stadium employed 180 workers - mostly part-time - including 25 full-time staff - and could cater for 1,500 customers.
However, its closure followed a general decline in the popularity of greyhound racing over the decade before the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to a planning statement with the application: “The former greyhound race track, which had already been in financial difficulty before the lockdown, represented a leisure activity that had been declining in popularity across the UK.
"The proposed redevelopment of this brownfield site offers a range of employment opportunities compared with the previous Greyhound Stadium use, contributing to economic growth in the area.”