The only Olympic Legacy Park outside a host city anywhere in the world, Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park was set up after the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to deliver whole population improvements in health and wellbeing.

A new Community Arena will complete the first £100m development phase of Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park providing community basketball facilities and become the new home of Sheffield Sharks Basketball Team.Also included in this development phase is a 3,900-capacity Legacy community stadium which developer, Scarborough Group International (SGI) is due to deliver by February 2022. It will become the new home of Sheffield Eagles Rugby League and provide 23,000 sq ft of business and conference space. 

SGI has now also produced a Master Plan for the next five years which will see a further 850,000 sq ft of real estate development at Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park, which should attract investment of around £250m.

It follows the opening of Sheffield Hallam University’s £14m Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre (AWRC) a year ago. The AWRC features world-class facilities for multi-disciplinary researchers to carry out research on health and physical activity in collaboration with the private sector, charities and the community, with a focus on taking services and products from concept to market.

Despite Covid, the AWRC has welcomed a full-house of 24 start-up business from across the world to its £900,000 Wellbeing Accelerator programme and is expanding its long-Covid recovery project and plans for new research into the role of exercise in cancer care.  

 “The Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park is perhaps the best physical representation of the ideals of a health legacy from the Olympic Games anywhere in the world. The Park brings together community, physical activity, research, education, sport, technology and innovation to transform health and wellbeing,” said Prof Rob Copeland, AWRC director.

“The importance of the nation's health and wellbeing and its links to economic prosperity has never been more obvious. With the assets and partners located on Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park, we are well positioned to lead the research and innovation agenda to improve the health and wellbeing of our nation.”