Undercover leisure venue has high green IQ

The biggest undercover entertainment venue in Europe is to incorporate ‘intelligent building’ technology that will give feedback on its environmental performance.

Rotherham Borough Council recently granted planning permission for the £300 million ‘YES!’ project, which is to be built on a 327 acre greenbelt site in South Yorkshire.

The 1.2 million sq ft centre will include hotels, restaurants, bars, conference rooms, and other leisure facilities, leading to 2,700 jobs for the local region.

The venue also plans to have an Olympic standard canoe slalom, a live music arena, and other facilities for extreme sports fanatics.

Oak Holdings, the developers behind the project, are to receive strategic advice from CDC.

CDC specialise in ‘intelligent building’ design, whereby the buildings in a development give feedback via computer systems to a centralised location on carbon emissions, operational efficiency, and management costs.

The group are helping Oak Holdings to ensure that the ‘YES!’ project’s power, heating and cooling needs are provided in an environmentally sustainable way, and that this can constantly be monitored in the future.

However, environmental campaigners have been critical of the development because it is being built on greenbelt land.

They have raised concerns that the centre would destroy an important habitat for local wildlife.