Glasgow City Council will this week consider – at its Executive Committee on Friday 26 June – a report recommending the preferred development partner, the City Legacy consortium, to deliver the 2014 Commonwealth Games Athletes Village.

The successful development of the 38.5 hectares site in Dalmarnock, in the heart of the Clyde Gateway project, is a key component in the delivery of the Games. The Village will provide accommodation and facilities for 6,500 competitors and officials.

After the Games, the Village will become a desirable new residential community including private housing, 300 homes for rent and a new 120 bed care home for the elderly. The removal of the temporary facilities within the Athletes’ Village after the Games will release additional land for further residential development.

The proposal for the Village has high design and environmental standards and will deliver a highly desirable new residential neighbourhood within Glasgow’s East End.

The masterplan submitted by City Legacy will deliver a 95% reduction in carbon emissions from the new homes to be constructed – a first in Scotland for a development of this scale, of over 1400 homes and the care home.

Through the development of the Village, the successful development partner will be expected to bring community benefits to the city by generating employment and training opportunities and creating opportunities for small to medium sized enterprises and social enterprises.

One example of this is the number of new jobs – 93 – that will be created as part of an overall direct workforce of 620. 60 of these will be apprentices. The partnering agreements with sub-contractors and suppliers will see 36 new jobs being created there, 24 of which will be apprentices. The indirect workforce will be around 200.

After inviting interested parties to submit initial masterplans illustrating how they would develop the site, the three consortia on the final shortlist were considered by Glasgow City Council in the final months of the project, before the final scoring process and selection was made.

Throughout the entire process, the businesses involved had to show that they had the appropriate resources, knowledge, skills and experience to deliver the master planning, funding, construction and re-use of the Athletes’ Village.

The key criteria of the scoring process included project design, project delivery, infrastructure impact, community benefits and contractual, financial and legal details.

Councillor Steven Purcell, Leader of Glasgow City Council, said: “The Athletes’ Village will be one of the most recognisable aspects of the legacy of the 2014 Commonwealth Games – and certainly one of the most important – and I am delighted to say that the process to identify a development partner attracted a number of absolutely outstanding masterplans. The fact that the private sector has demonstrated such confidence in this project shows that Glasgow continues to be an attractive place to do business, and I look forward to the successful delivery of a key part of the Games and later, the creation of a stunning new neighbourhood for the city as Glasgow’s regeneration continues. The construction of the Athletes’ Village will create fantastic opportunities for local people and businesses to show the world what Glasgow can do.”

Michael Cavanagh, Chairman of Commonwealth Games Scotland said: “The Village lies at the heart of every Commonwealth Games and is the one place that sums up the whole Games experience for the athletes. It is therefore great to see the plans for Glasgow’s Village taking shape and Commonwealth Games Scotland welcomes this important first step.”

John Scott, Chief Executive of Glasgow 2014 Limited, the Organising Committee for the Commonwealth Games, said: “We aspire to deliver an outstanding, athlete-focused Games in 2014 and the development of a high quality Athletes’ Village forms an important part of that ambition. Of course the legacy to the East End of Glasgow is also hugely important and we believe this development will be able to meet the aspirations of all the Games’ partners.”

While Glasgow City Council shall make the Village site available at nil cost initially in order to reduce borrowing requirements, the appointed development partner will enter into a profit sharing arrangement with the Council at the end of the project.

Images, including video of how the site appears now and what it will look like during the 2014 Commonwealth Games and after, are available on request from Glasgow City Council.