APRIL | REVIEW
Going the
extra furlong
Arena is helping Cheltenham
Festival count itself among the
world’s most prestigious horse
racing events
W
ith nearly 6,000 staff
employed over four days, and
more than 250 helicopter
movements over the four days , The
Cheltenham Festival presented by
Magners is a powerful economic
driver for the UK, and its VIP audience
have helped continuously drive
improvements in Arena’s offering.
Arena’s project director Ben Sly has
seen Cheltenham become home to some
of the company’s best innovations.
“The first cantilever balcony was
designed and made for Cheltenham,
a balcony without legs. The Health
& Safety specifications have gone up
massively over the past years. It’s now
very much a CDM site and we run it as a
construction site, controlling everyone
passing into that area.”
New this year at the event are tweaks
to the existing standard, new materials
and specifications for the toilets and
new designs.
“This is a brilliant event for us, a great
winter event, and perfect in terms of
timing. It balances our demand across
the year nicely,” says Sly. “We started
after The November Meeting in 2019,
and we can only go to a certain level
of height to keep the aesthetic right
until The International race meeting in
December, when the structure looks like
a white platform. As soon as that’s done,
we can then commence the next stage
but again can only go so far before a race
18
meeting on New Year’s Day. It’s a tricky
build because of these limitations.
“This project utilises our skills and
our kit to achieve a fantastic finish. We
don’t construct many triple decks like
this.”
Arena started designing restaurants
two years ago pushed successfully by
the Jockey Club, to give them contracts
to build restaurants at the event.
“We designed and fitted out two new
restaurants that we won contracts for.
We can offer a competitive price as we
are on site installing so much anyhow
we can easily fold it into the project”
adds Sly.
Once the Arena team have delivered
the designs early on in the process, Sly is
able to tweak the build as things change
slightly on site, a benefit to having
Arena feet on the ground.
The structures have been widely
lauded. “This is the top spec, they call
it the ‘Cheltenham standard’. We have
top organisers from major events like
Wimbledon and Chelsea come along
to see our work, and we use a lot of the
ideas in the Jockey Club’s other sites,
Aintree, Epsom and Newmarket. We
also build the Guinness Village, an
area that’s very popular. It’s an iconic
“This is a brilliant event
for us, a great winter
event, and perfect in
terms of timing..”
part of The Festival with a great party
atmosphere,” Sly adds.
“Staff wise, there’s 70 on site per
day, with a few new staff on board this
year, but most of them have been with
us for a long stint. They’ve been doing
this for years. It’s a challenge to get the
skill level to the Arena Standard as the
event grows so recruitment is a careful
process.”
The Horse and Groom is one of
the most popular restaurants and
it’s changed the look and feel of the
structures internally. “We always find
better ways to execute the walling, and
panelling, with ‘beading’ being used to
form squares effects taking off over the
last few years. It’s key to the Jockey Club
that there’s continuous improvement.”
Arena have also gone from doing
occasional furniture, to all the furniture
provision, including some upgrading
of chairs. They work closely with GL
events, who also provide structures.
“The most challenging thing is
building in the footprint set. There’s
hallowed ground we can’t touch in front
of us. We’ve known the GL events staff,
who build structures on site, well and
we get on famously. We work together
on the logistics of the build, there are
always friendly compromises.”