Club general manager Rod Beckwith told The Courier that the vision had been in planning for the past four years and hoped construction – which began in June – would be completed by mid-October.

The new facility will be available for use in the upcoming Ballarat District Bowls Division pennant season and will provide bowlers with the opportunity to beat the elements and play during days of extreme weather.

“We think it will be a huge feature driving down Albert Street and a good thing for the Sebastopol area,” Beckwith said.

Beckwith said fostering bowls within the club and the wider community was part of the SBC constitution.

“By doing such projects, we’re upholding our constitution and our statement of purpose. We are a non-for-profit bowling club,” he said.

Beckwith said the new synthetic green would play like a grass surface.

“One way that we’ve been trying to describe it is that it’s an outdoor green with a cover, as opposed to an indoor green, if you like,” he said.

Beckwith said the roof was made out of a new type of Teflon, which was yet to be used anywhere in Australia.

“We decided that even though it hadn’t been used before, it was a product worth going with,” he said.

Beckwith hoped the facility would open up a range of options for the club.

“We’d like to also increase participation of bowls in regards to having night pennant, night social bowls. We think there’s a lot of avenues for marketing bowls,” he said.

Sebastopol, which also has two grass greens, fields a side in the Geelong-Ballarat premier pennant competition. The Kookaburras finished last season in eighth position on the table.

Representatives of the Ballarat Geelong Premier Division Pennant Committee are set to meet and discuss the future of the league on July 20.

This follows the Geelong Bowls Region giving 12 months’ notice of its desire to pull out of the competition.