A £900,000 transformation of the former Woodland Road sports and social centre has seen the site reopen with a new look and a wide range of new services.
Woodland Road Community HWB is now owned and run by a charity called Hwb Torfaen. It’s run by a board of trustees with Dan Oliver as the chief executive officer, and Ashleigh Taylor as the chair.
The Hwb includes a cafe, a recording studio, a podcasting suite, a free meeting room, small health and wellbeing businesses, and refurbished function rooms including one with a stage. The charity is working with Croesyceiliog RFC, who used to have changing rooms on the site, to apply for funding to build a new block on the former paddling pool area next to the rugby pitch.
Dan said: “So the last month or two has been a time of opening everything, so for the last two years we’ve been renovating. Over the last six years we’ve got in £1.7 million and around £900,000 of that has been capital renovation.”
The work has been supported by the National Lottery’s People and Place fund and Welsh Government’s Community Facilities Grant.
Funding
Dan said: “Another core funder who’s been supporting us for the last six years are Croesyceiliog and Llanyrafon Community Council. So we have a very strong partnership and they’ve been incredibly supportive. We couldn’t do what we’ve done without them.
“The capital work is done, and now it’s about opening, getting the café open, getting the bar open, the recording studio, the digital suite, the Hwb Lab, all the projects, all the ideas that we’ve had over this time, and now is the time to execute all of that, and that’s what we’re trying to do.
“In effect, over the last six weeks we’ve tried to set up five or six different businesses all at once, but it’s going well.”
The centre’s large function room is already booked for fitness classes including zumba and line dancing.
He said: “We want to offer that out to the community for parties, weddings, funerals, music concerts. We want it to really bring back as a place of connection for the community to use. It’s their space and their place to celebrate what’s important to them so we want it to be really diverse.”
The building’s former community council chamber is now a free meeting room.
Dan said: “We call that the volunteer portal, and community groups can contact us, book in on an ad-hoc basis if they’ve got meetings. There’s a whiteboard in there, flip chart paper, and there’s a screen. It’s got everything you need for a meeting for about 12 people.”
Two small independent businesses are about open inside the centre.
Dan said: “We’ve developed a bunch of offices, and we’ve got holistic therapies coming in one and we’ve got sports massage in another. One is still available, so we’re getting a lot of interest in that now.
Sustainable
“The plan is to get everything operational and sustainable and so get the bar working, let’s get the place full, let’s try and get to capacity. Let’s get some really good community projects here working from here, let’s make this a home and a place of connection for the local communities. That’s my goal.”
A project already underway is to support the rugby club to build new changing rooms.
He said: “We’re working with Torfaen now to take some of the land, the old paddling pool, off our lease and give that lease to the rugby club and then we will work with the club and the local authority to support them with funding to build changing rooms on site.
“We want this to be their home and really want to celebrate that and work with them. We want everyone on this site, not just to be users of the site but partners that’s what we want and that’s what we aim to bring with Croesy rugby club.”
View a gallery of photos here on the Cwmbran Life Facebook page.