DESIGNS for an ­innovative outdoor community centre are a step closer to reality after a £250,000 windfall.

As reported in the Evening Times in December, Heart of Scotstoun Community Centre needed local support and funding to expand.

But now it has been given £250,000 by the Big Lottery Fund.

Centre manager Fiona McEwan said: "We are delighted. It's amazing that we have been given this money and can push ahead.

"We have known about the grant for a couple of weeks so it has been hard to keep it a secret."

Dubbed The Back Green, the outdoor centre will give open space and facilities where users of the community centre can take up gardening, exercising and socialise.

Open to all ages, it will offer play and exercise equipment, accessible walk-ways, and gardening features such as raised beds.

The idea for the outdooor community centre was dreamed up after an initial consul-tation with local people on what to do with spare ground next to the centre.

Fiona and her staff had appealed to local people to tell them what they wanted The Back Green to offer.

And they answered that they wanted a community garden, exercise equipment, social areas, a barbe-cue and play space.

All of this will transform industrial land which used to be part of the Albion motor works.

Diggers have already been out to clear away mounds of earth to make the site in Balmoral Street ready for development.

An earlier Lottery grant of £11,000 helped pay for a feasibility study, while Fiona and the team raised £15,000 for a giant greenhouse where local people will be able to raise plants and grow fruit and veg.

She said: "These facilities exist else-where but this is the first time - and certainly the first time in Scotstoun - that they have all been available in one place."

Maria Fletcher, chairwoman of Heart of Scotstoun, said: "We expect the features to be open in late 2014."

catriona.stewart@ eveningtimes.co.uk