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Belfast Live
Belfast Live
National
Damien Edgar

Thunder Park Bangor fighting for future with deadline looming

Thunder Park in Bangor is facing a race against time to find an organisation or sponsor willing to save it from having to close its doors.

The indoor urban sports centre is based at the Eddie Irvine Sports Centre in Bangor, but has been unable to agree a new contract for the space having come to the ned of its current arrangement.

Matthew Gillespie, the founder and driving force behind the centre, said they need a miracle or the resource, which serves the whole island of Ireland, will be lost.

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"I think we've surpassed everybody's expectations with the venue that we've created," he said.

"We knew that we had a five-year contract and we set ourselves pretty high targets of attracting people to the venue and supporting sports.

"The thought of losing it, to our customers and supporters, is pretty devastating.

"I'm not precious about the ownership of this, I think the facility and the legacy of what it offers has to live on."

Matthew said they have really only two options open to them now for survival, with a deadline of March 12 looming.

"I guess in hindsight if we had have set ourselves up as a different type of organisation, we would have been able to attract and make use of a lot of support and grants and things that are available," he said.

"I feel like if we can't find a way to stay here, our best chance of survival would be to be adopted into a big, large public-scale organisation like a charity or something that focusses on working with young people.

"Or potentially a corporate sponsor, who likes what we do, understands the benefit of the things that we're offering children and young people, and sees that as something they want to support.

"Realistically, those are how we feel we're going to be able to move on."

He said the response to news of their potential closure had been an outpouring of love for the venue on their social media pages.

He added that over the course of its five years in operation, the centre had welcomed around 30,000 unique visitors.

"We're honestly really grateful at the lengths people are going to in terms of pointing us in the direction of new buildings and things like that," he said.

"The difficulty we have is if we are to relocate, the simple cost of taking this apart and storing it is £20,000 alone.

"To take it apart and move it to another building is a disassemble, redesign and reassemble and I mean I can only imagine it's going to be in the region of £75,000 and that's before we even consider another building."

Ryan Henderson is a BMX freestyle athlete for Ireland, having represented them at European level, and is targeting qualification for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

He trains and coaches at Thunder Park and said the facility is unique and would represent a terrible loss to urban sport for all those who have come through their doors.

"This is a world class facility, we've never had anything like this," he said.

"The likes of the foam pit and the resi-ramp, I was doing a double backflip there, something as gnarly as that, you can come in completely wrong and you're still perfectly fine and you get up and do it again.

"But if we didn't have these facilities, the level of BMX, scooter and skateboard wouldn't be as high as it is today.

"The fact that even across the water in England, they have facilities like this and the level is ridiculous - we're slowly catching up to them, but if this is taken away, it's just going to drop again."

He said the facility's influence extends far beyond simply teaching kids the technique and physical aspects of urban sports.

"It gives me so much joy teaching these kids because I remember walking into the first skatepark I was in and it's so intimidating," he said.

"But when you have a coach breaking all these things down for you, it doesn't seem that bad.

"These kids are achieving things they didn't think was possible.

"BMX has shown me a lot in here, but see just taking things away from in here into my life?

"It's given me so much confidence, it's shown me that I can do things, it's amazing what it can do for you."

For owner Matthew, the place that Thunder Park occupies in the heart of its community only really became apparent when he announced the news that they were facing closure.

"I have never seen support and people pouring their hearts out saying what their children have got out of it, so that to me, says it has to stay, we have to find a solution somehow."

A fundraising page has also been set up to help support the much-loved community skate park, more details are available here.

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