
Tower trax free#
There is also a ground level free car park with disabled spaces. There is an open plaza between the buildings providing outdoor seating. ft., according to its ultimate owner Landsec. The buildings at Tower Park occupy an area of 199,000 sq. Tower Park continues to be listed by Landsec as one of its leisure properties on its website. In 2013, X-Leisure was taken over by the UK’s largest property development and investment Group, Landsec. In 2014, a chemical spill at the Splashdown Waterpark resulted in hundreds of people being evacuated from the attraction. Gala Bingo, which had taken over Ice Trax premises in the mid-90s, was re-branded as Buzz Bingo in 2018. In 2016, it was sold to Cineworld together with four other Empire cinemas. Empire added an additional six screens and 500 seats in 2011, making the cinema one of the biggest multiplexes in the south of the country. The cinema was sold to Empire Cinemas in 2004 along with five other UCI theatres in other parts of the UK. A newly rebuilt Burger King restaurant was opened in 2005, the original restaurant having been destroyed by a disgruntled Burger King employee in an arson attack 18 months earlier. The existing buildings were also given new cladding and an open plaza created between Splashdown and the cinema, allowing the new restaurants to have outside seating. These included Pizza Hut, Nando’s and KFC. The following year X-Leisure invested £5m in refurbishing and expanding the facilities in the park, including adding additional restaurant units. In 2003, Tower Park was sold to X-Leisure, a company headed by PY Gerbeau, which added it to its Xscape brand. The company was fined by the Environment Agency, although Tesco claimed it had been treated unfairly. In 2002 it was discovered that a petrol leak from the store’s filling station had been polluting local groundwater for six months.

Ī Tesco supermarket store was also built at Tower Park. The latter did briefly re-open in 2002, but the re-launch did not last. Ice Trax closed in the mid-1990s and The Venue in 1999.

Although the complex as a whole was rescued by its sale to Tower Park Properties, neither the Ice Trax skating rink nor The Venue nightclub proved to be commercially viable in the longer term. However, within three years of opening, the park went into Administration as a consequence of the early 1990s recession.

The original attractions included a 10-screen UCI cinema, Megabowl (a 30-lane bowling alley), Ice Trax skating rink, Splashdown Waterpark and an 1,850-capacity nightclub called The Venue, which became one of the leading ‘ superclubs’ in the country. Tower Park was initially very successful as the quality of its attractions and free parking proved popular. Riddle funded the project by selling some land at Mannings Heath to Tesco and much of the park was leased to Allied Leisure PLC. The site chosen for the park was at Mannings Heath, on 53 acres of heathland just outside Poole. The leisure park, which opened in 1989, was a development initiated by local Dorset businessman Bill Riddle, who operated a landfill site in the area.
