transport hub

Right, now if you’d like to gather a little closer to the window I’ll point out the various buildings. We’re at the highest point of the stadium here in the rooftop cafe, on the opposite side to the main entrance doors. On our left, you can see two buildings just beyond the end of the stadium. The closest one is the business centre, used for meetings and conferences, and so on, which provides a good source of revenue for the upkeep of the sports facilities; and next to the business centre the bigger building is the hotel which is rented from us by an independent company. As you see, they are served by the perimeter road which runs round three-quarters of the site. Now, coming round to the front of the building, immediately in front of the entrance, that circular open space at the end of the road is the transport hub. From here, there are buses and a monorail link to the free car park, about ten minutes from here, but you can’t see that. There’s also a large secure cycle park. Oh, and disabled parking, of course. People find it’s very convenient and it keeps the site virtually car-free.
OK. Now if you look as far as you can over to the right, beyond the buildings, you can see our outdoor pitches, which I mentioned earlier. Between the pitches and the entrance is a little kind of pedestrian plaza... are you with me? OK, with the cinema in the building furthest away from us, next to the pitches, then there’s the ten-pin bowling between the cinema and the road.
Near the far end of the perimeter road and between the mini roundabout and the pitches — there’s our fitness centre, with all kinds of equipment, and a small pool, and changing rooms for teams using the pitches. Then, joined on to the stadium, next to the entrance, is a range of small shops which all specialise in sports equipment, clothes, shoes. They sell toys and so on as well, all that sort of thing. They seem to be doing well! As you see, the service road goes right round, but we keep the traffic and the pedestrians well apart, so it’s all very relaxed round the plaza, popular with families. And just in front of the bowling is our lovely restaurant. You can see it from here — it’s that building on the plaza between us and the bowling. It’s open all day and in the evenings. There’s quite a queue there at weekends. I’m pleased to say. So, now since you’ve got the layout, we can go and have a closer look at everything.