New Ground Shelved!!!

[mattboyslim]

Thanks for adding some meat on the bones Paul, I have to say the impression i saw looked better than I expected, with a bowl stadium, it doesn't look like they planned to keep any of the South stand to be honest.  Hopefully thay can come up with something similar with a better financial plan in the future.

[le god cuervo]

fair enough, the council are hardly going to give away £25million worth of land for free.

its a bit short sighted of the club to expect that really.

[Sippo]

That has made me angry now  :x  What is wrong with our damn council! They can spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands pounds on traffic lights (that don't work ie. Old Town) but aren't willing to help the football club of the town. Can they not see that the town will benefit as a whole.

Lets set Mex on them.  

[yeo]

fair enough really, the council are hardly going to give away £25million worth of land for free

I think the lands only worth that with house built on it.

[le god cuervo]

fair enough really, the council are hardly going to give away £25million worth of land for free

I think the lands only worth that with house built on it.

which is what the council will do after we go bankrupt & the stadium is knocked down.

[pauld]

Having just read the article and seen the plans put forward I must say its hardly suprising that theses plans have been rejected.The proposed green space that was supposed to be left isnt there,its taken up with starter homes.

The legal issues of giving the club the land around the CG to build houses on to fund 1/2 the stadium  are a major concern.

And both of the above points were well-known to the club - we told last October they had to leave the open space next to the athletics track (and Bob Holt publicly committed to do so at the Trust forum in January) and we've been telling them since the process started that there was no way they would get away with a proposal that involved a large-scale asset transfer. This isn't a "told you so", just a reflection of incredulity at the inability of Mikey D to actually take any advice whatsoever.

[pauld]

fair enough really, the council are hardly going to give away £25million worth of land for free

I think the lands only worth that with house built on it.

which is what the council will do after we go bankrupt & the stadium is knocked down.

Not the point cuervo - as I understand it, they are not legally allowed to give the land away or even sell it for less than it's developed value. Otherwise, any shonky developer could just go to the council and ask for some undeveloped land which is worthless without planning permission, get the planning permission and suddenly have an asset worth millions. Which is what used to happen - developers made a killing for doing nothing, while council taxpayers saw valuable assets sold off for buttons.

[Piemonte]

Does anyone know and if so can explain how other "community" stadiums have been funded? and what the local council's role was?

[Asher]

Isnt teh area of the county ground only allowed for sports tho? I thought there was a clause in the ownership that it must stay that way?

[McLovin]

I hope that when we fold, they have to stick by the covenant.  A nice sized bit of land with a shitty athletics track and a disused County Ground will be everso useful...

[mattboyslim]

Good point about other community facilities, I guess whatever happens the council still has to own the site and garner the revenue, which in this case can't happen as it's needed to fund the development.  Often clubs have relocated to less valuable land and freed up valuable central sites for other uses, whereas we are trying to redevlop on a valuable central site.

[Cookie]

How is it possibly the fault of the Council?? STFC asking to be given land for free and then build houses making one lucky deveoper very rich.

Undoubtedly it was SBC's fault for the Tipstad but blaming the council for the club's complete lack of commercial common sense is unbelievable.  :-))(

[Mark D]

Just for the record, I did not say ' I think it will go ahead anyway'. My quote was along the lines of we still believe it is a workable plan, but until we understand fully the thoughts of the council  (and we have not received anything from them officially yet) we cannot respond properly. Lots of politics in play here as you can imagine, and it is not helpful to say that people have simply not listened to what they have been advised. These proposals are based on some direction we have been given. If, at the end of the day the council do not really want the club to stay in the borough,  which is what we would prefer to do, then we will need to consider the other opportunity presented to the club which would see us move out of the borough (but not towards Newbury!) We sincerely hope the all-party working group is not a smokescreen and will actually work toward finding a way for the redevelopment to happen.

[Piemonte]

As a badlly thought out idea - Could the council not just retain ownership of the land, but still redevelop and reap the profits? STFC would still not own the stadium but could run the facilities on behalf of the council and share the profits?

[dogs]

If we are to move out of the borough, i'd like to know how much exactly. A few miles out wouldn't be that bad but any further and it's basically a new club.