Royal Ascot's New Home

Georgina Hunter-Jones

HELICOPTER LIFE visited the new improved Royal Ascot

This year Royal Ascot returned to Ascot Racecourse after the £200 million make-over of the grandstand and track; all finished on time and within budget. The twenty month renovation used HOK Sport (Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum) as the Architects with Buro Happold as the Engineer and Project Manager and White Horse Contractors for the track work. Overseeing the whole development was the Chief Executive of the Course, Douglas Erskine-Crum, a former brigadier in the Scots Guards. Ironically one of the other projects that HOK Sport has been involved in is the revamping of Wembley Stadium, still unfinished. One of both HOK and Buro Happold's current future assignments is as part of the consortium involved with the 2012 Olympics. Perhaps the group wish they could take Erskine-Crum with them as overseer and time-keeper.

The new grandstand is certainly light and airy, if a little reminiscent of an airport, but, as Erskine-Crum pointed out, the racecourse was forced to take on large debts to make a renovation of this nature and consequently will need to be far more commercial in the future in order to pay back the loans. Certainly the atmosphere over Royal Ascot week...