Thetownend.com

STFC wants to be given cash


READING E Jones' letter concerning the County Ground (Monday January 16) his observations about Nick Martin being a once every four years football fan could easily be aimed at many people.

After all, how many of the 35,000 Swindon fans that made their way to Wembley in 1993 turn up every week to support the town?

Only a small percentage as the majority of these people were and are fair weather fans and if they had remained loyal maybe the club would not be in its current precarious position.

Football may be the national game but that doesn't put Swindon Town Football Club above the laws of the land.

Other councils may have helped their football club to upgrade or replace their stadiums but they didn't sell acres of land for new housing to finance it.

This is what STFC would like to see happen. They have no money to put in themselves and their answer is to use land belonging to the people of Swindon to finance a new stadium, hotel facilities, conference centre etc, which will pay off their debts and ultimately see them use the additional income from the extra facilities to stay solvent and pay out dividends to the shareholders To be honest you cannot blame them for trying.

But as a council taxpayer and town centre resident I find it completely unacceptable that we should face losing yet another sporting/playing field to yet more housing and ultimately seeing the loss of land for financing and enhancing a business.

Like it or not the whole situation is about money. STFC want to be given it and Swindon Council cannot give them any. This is not a small-minded attitude, this is a fact.

K LEAKEY.

Swindon

I can't get over the blokes name.

im sure that STFC dont want the councils money, as it will still be the councils property? also losing sporting facitlietes wot bout the facitlities that will be created for the community?

dont people realise that if STFC move away from the county ground site even more houses will be built there anyway!

and think of the affect it would have on local businesses.
The Burger King/Chip Shop and the pubs would lose out finacially(sp).

Leaky by name leaky by letter (you can use that for free if anyone puts a response in).



No they gave them cold hard cash or in some cases gave them land to re-develop commercially to fund construction.

This all harps back to the original problem mentioned in another thread last week.  You lay a few titbits out and individuals go into blood lust.  If Mr Leaky took the time and trouble to write a letter he may have taken the time and trouble to at least make his letter accurate.

The club have not requested land.  They put forward a proposal, rumour has it after being led to believe it was entirely feasible by a councillor and were then told it was out of the question.  

It's widely understood that the council are not going to be green lighting the little master plan outlined above and the club certainly won't be running with it.

Maybe Mr Leaky would do well to read this little page of info: http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/property/flagshipprojects/stadium.php

I'll select some quotes:

Now on to Swansea..




Sound Familiar?



Hmmmm..



Fancy using Council-owned land for that purpose... shocking..






Wouldn't that be nice..

http://www.swansea.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=9850

Nive investigatory work there BR

 8)


To be honest I didn't know a lot about either of these developments.. I was quite shocked to find out just how similar the Swansea situation was to our current situation..

It seems pretty simple to me..

Club can't afford stadium

Council can't afford stadium..

Council wants to invest in city sporting facilities... ('Swindon 2010 - Taking Control of our Future'??)

Council combines a community facility with a private sector commercial development.

Swindon now has a world-class multi-use sporting venue to be proud of which will benefit the whole community for decades to come..

(apologies for blatant quoting.. :wink: )

all well and good but where will the athletics and cricket clubs be moved to.
this does need addressing,i personally dont care but others will.
it may effect councillors decisions about any future development.

all very well replying to the guy on here. put it in a letter to the adver so the twat (and everyone else for that matter) can see what an ill informed idiot he is! :old:

That is the only major question that still doesn't have a proper answer form the club, and will prove to be the stumbling block if they did continue with the original outline proposals of using all the land (it won't get through planning).

The middle ground is to use all the space in the car park, behind the Arkells, the small bit behind the Stratton Bank (not the grassed area - although this could be landscaped as part of the proposal to sweeten the locals), and the land from the ground to the Magic Roundabout.

Build up rather than out and we should just be able to include most of what we desire (flats rather than houses, high rise hotel like in the Town Centre, inc conference and new stands with executive boxes).

As other have posted, the legality issues are a red herring, but as you hint at, the land issues will be played on by locals unless a middle ground is found.

It's not Rob, far from it. The club have only made outline proposals public and there could well be a hell of a lot of devil to be found in the detail - they'd need a properly put business case before they could go any further. But at this stage, all they've sought to do is (quite correctly) to put some proposals out as an initial outline. What's disappointing is how some have chosen to use this as an excuse to try and shoot the whole thing down before it gets started.

The only problem we seem to have is that most clubs moved to an area on the edge of Town freeing up prime central sites.  We tried this already (to no avail), and we are now trying to do it on such a central site.  In Swansea both the rugby and footbal grounds were pretty close to the centre, (so aside from getting two sports grounds to develop, which is quite unusual) and the facilities are now in the morpha valley (i think) where a small exisiting athletics stadium already existed and I assume the land was cheaper and plentiful.

Of the major questions that have been raised (which seem to be legality of land use, finance - the big picture,ownership and which land to use)

Has anyone questioned the council what happens if we go bust, or move out the borough?

Will the CG become an unused ghost stadium? Will they demolish it and replace it with grass?

You get a response along the lines of something to keep it as a lesiure facility.  However it's easy to say that now, but then the developers vultures begin to circle with their wads of cash then a big Ikea it is.  Think that is even more lucrative than housing, but you can guess where recreation will be down the pecking order once the bids come in.

The financial questions are far from answered except in possibly the broadest outline - would the club treat the land donation as a loan for example and pay interest as well as rent?
Or, if they are expecting to just pay rent, are they anticipating paying a higher rent (for an improved facility) or still paying at the current level?
If excess profits are made from the housebuilding will the council be a true partner in that development and so get a cut or would it just be divvied up between the club's holding company and the developer?
Moving on, the ownership picture is also far from clear - the club have said the council will own the ground as now. All well and good, but who will own the extra non-matchday revenue-generating facilities - the club, we assume, as the aim is to enable the club to stand on it's own two feet by having these revenues but it's far from clear.
And then would they be owned by the club per se or by the holding company or the joint venture with the developers?
And what guarantees would we (or the council come to that) have that these profits would go to the football club per se, rather than the private business that owns it? Because if there's not structural guarantee about this, it makes the club ripe for asset-stripping.

Like I say, Rob, there's a hell of a lot of questions that still need answering and (we assume/hope) are questions the club would be able to answer when they present a detailed business case behind the proposals. These are just a few off the top of my head - there's plenty more to be asked - so it's a bit naive to say all the major questions have been answered, cos they haven't.

Absolutely Rob, and you can almost hear the outraged squeals of the residents as they realise they've been stitched by the council failing to keep their promises again once the developers come sniffing. Have they learned nothing from Coate? (Rhetorical question: answer, no)

I thought the club said the whole development would end up being owned by the council?

The big financial question I see as being answered is that it could be done, not the details of how.  For me we are still stuck at the the concept stage, let alone the details of how it would work.

Once that is out of the way, then you get into the business case, which is utlimately down to the Ltd company and Council to discuss what suits them.  But if we are at that stage then we are saying a development can be made to work.  We are still pretty much at exactly the same point we were 17 months or so ago when you guys got the Council to agree to the motion, albeit with a pretty picture and plenty of arguments filling the time.

Yep, fair comment. Sorry, I think I misunderstood what you were saying re questions having all been answered as there are still some very big questions to be answered, but as you say that would usually be done at the next stage. Unfortunately as someone said earlier in this thread the process has been somewhat ambushed by people trying to kill it off by seizing on every last bit of what are only intended as outline proposals. Makes you wonder which part of "outline" they didn't understand.  :x

I don't really keep up to speed with the plans and aims of the council, but i just remembered that the Oasis is going.  Is there plans for a replacement?  Do they not value community sport and leisure facilities, as this would be an ideal time to create an area to be proud of, be it at the CG or on a sexy bit of land somewhere nearby?

The Oasis is going? WHEN? I love that place!

Oasis is indeed earmarked for development - into housing I think - no current plans have been devised to replace it, just a task group I think to look at it!

Ah, right. That makes perfect sense really... lose leisure facility for housing, fail to replace said leisure facility. Perfect.

Council tax is going up again too, isn't it?  Good to see we are continually getting improved services and stuff for each increase...

You've hit the nail on the head DB and probably the best bet for getting a redevelopment is to build an OASIS II at the CG and merge that in with the redev plans. Course that would mean a radical restructuring of the club's current  proposals but if both parties (club and council) look at it as a serious scheme they're committed to make working, it could yet prove to be the way round the "asset transfer" issue.

I don't know how anyone can possibly complain, I mean they put a toilet in next to The Mailcoach didn't they? what more can we want?

Ah, yes.  A public toilet by the Mailcoach. Good to see someone in the planning committee has a sense of humour!

The've only put that there to appease the gay communities lack of cottaging facilites elsewhere. I'm sure they deem that as "leisure"

A modern day pre cursor to the private brothel, just with a more "targetted" clientelle!

Not being a local to Swindon, I can't comment really on the councils policies past or previous.

However....

I'm currently writing my dissertation on the subject of football stadiums as an investment decision and have spent the last couple of hours particularly envious of Northampton.

The examples of Swansea and Hull have already been pointed out but Northampton was a club who had a stadium built for them. The ground was funded almost entirely by the council, with the only notable other input being a football trust grant put aside by John Major and co in the 1990's (a grant I would assume we would also have access too, since its simply a large pool of money designed to ensured clubs never have the poor facilities that were deemed to contribute to Hillsbrough. Like Hull and Swansea, the council retained ownership of the ground but the major difference was that the stadium only really serves as a football stadium and is not shared with another sport or various commercial facilities. The idea being that a council owned ground is money spent of benefit to the community it is elected to serve.

The point I guess I am trying to make, is that Northampton Council felt the value of the club to the community was such that it warranted a stadium being built. Shame Swindon council can not draw a similar conclusion and adopt similar policies based on a similar relationship with the club.