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OTHER CENTRE SITES SELECTION
With the aim of building a minimum of five Centres in the coming five years, HG&L has
been prospecting locations, where sufficient land may be available. Cities with sites
identified and currently being considered, in addition to Newcastle, are North and West
London, Crawley, Southampton, Milton Keynes, Reading, Bristol, Cardiff, Leicester,
Nottingham, Sheffield, and Edinburgh.
The criteria for selection are:
• The land is either privately or local authority owned, the latter as a number of LAs have
undeveloped land, even in some cases an under-performing golf course, which they
are seeking to redevelop. To satisfy planning requirements and their local community,
they need to continue previous sporting, leisure and community benefit activities,
albeit on a small portion of the land they wish to redevelop, A Hot Shots Centre ticks
many of the boxes they have to take into account.
• Great transport access, although primarily by car for visitors coming from up to 15
miles away – a 30 to 45 minutes drive.
• A catchment area within excess of 800k population.
• Either freehold or long leasehold and, if the latter, acquired at a premium with a
nominal rent or at a rack rent fixed as a percentage of revenue.
• As with Newcastle, there is significant advantage for a Centre to be located on or
immediately adjacent to an operating golf course. The Centre can provide the club
house facilities, pro-shop, academy and hospitality, all on an improved scale to that
which some clubs with falling membership are finding ever more difficult to provide.
For visitors to the Centre they can graduate from the range to the course and be
exposed to the pleasures and challenges of golf.
• With an eye to the long term, the possibility of Centre land, over 20 to 50 years,
becoming suitable for alternative use with a land value greater than it has as a golf
range should not be ignored – essentially land banking while a profitable business
pursued on it.
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