Trust look to buy the CG

[The Artist Formerly Known as Audrey]

I can’t pretend to know the ins and outs about financing large projects, but if the Trust, or Power for that matter, have someone in the wings prepared to fork out for a stadium revamp what would be the cost to the club?

In the Trust’s case £15m on a new Town End will obviously need to generate a return for whoever stumps up the money. I presume to secure that money a charge would be levied on the CG at and a, hopefully, commercial rate charged. Assuming 5% that would mean the club coughing up £750,000 yearly in interest payments before even looking at paying off the capital.

Maybe any income streams from the new stand may be the developer’s carrot.

If this scenario is total bollocks, in good TEF fashion, I apologise.

[Reg Smeeton]

I can’t pretend to know the ins and outs about financing large projects, but if the Trust, or Power for that matter, have someone in the wings prepared to fork out for a stadium revamp what would be the cost to the club?

In the Trust’s case £15m on a new Town End will obviously need to generate a return for whoever stumps up the money. I presume to secure that money a charge would be levied on the CG at and a, hopefully, commercial rate charged. Assuming 5% that would mean the club coughing up £750,000 yearly in interest payments before even looking at paying off the capital.

Maybe any income streams from the new stand may be the developer’s carrot.

If this scenario is total bollocks, in good TEF fashion, I apologise.

In all previous redevelopment plans, whether having got to the little wooden model and some drawings on a noticeboard stage, or just something in Rikki's head, the 365 revenue stream thing hasn't come up with a workable idea.

You can look at other clubs to get ideas... so for example Saturday's opponents a Trust owned club, are in the process of redeveloping and part of it is being paid for by including student accommodation for the University.  Of course not an option for us.

Exeter is interesting, insofar as when they had economic problems a few years, the ground was flogged to Beazer Homes. 

This is what developers do stockpile land.... Exeter City Council eventually bought it back.  I guess it's what St Modwen were about back in the days of SSW, only their aim was the whole of the CG complex.

No developer is going to fund a CG redevelopment... there's no prospect of a return, unless it's for the whole site to build something else on, and move the club out

[ahounsell]

Irrespective of who owns the ground, unless you have a Steve Lansdown type owner prepared to fund a redevelopment out of his own pocket any redevelopment will have to be self financing which means it will likely be funded by a developer building something else on site which they profit from in the long term (e.g. a Hotel)
The club's benefit would be the larger / better facilities incorporated into the new stand(s) and the revenue streams they can generate from them.
A decent sized replacement for the Town end on its own would probably cost £3-4million if it were just a bog standard stand with a 3-4,000 capacity. A £15 million development must therefore include a lot more besides.
The Town End is the most logical place to start a redevelopment as it's where there is most room and the current facilities are most basic.
If you were going to develop the stratton bank, you'd be very limited on space which in turn would make it more difficult to fund.

[Reg Smeeton]

Irrespective of who owns the ground, unless you have a Steve Lansdown type owner prepared to fund a redevelopment out of his own pocket any redevelopment will have to be self financing which means it will likely be funded by a developer building something else on site which they profit from in the long term (e.g. a Hotel)
The club's benefit would be the larger / better facilities incorporated into the new stand(s) and the revenue streams they can generate from them.
A decent sized replacement for the Town end on its own would probably cost £3-4million if it were just a bog standard stand with a 3-4,000 capacity. A £15 million development must therefore include a lot more besides.
The Town End is the most logical place to start a redevelopment as it's where there is most room and the current facilities are most basic.
If you were going to develop the stratton bank, you'd be very limited on space which in turn would make it more difficult to fund.

Swindon seems pretty well stocked with hotels atm.... although a new one is going up on the old Southern Laundry site.

You could just about imagine some flats being included into the Bank, with perhaps a very small terrace in front

[pauld]

Did that already but the responses are ambiguous and don’t really give any answers hence posting on here for other views.

Well go back to them and ask for clarification if you're not happy with the answers. Nothing wrong with asking for greater clarity but asking questions of people on here who can only speculate or give their own interpretation seems a bit pointless when you can go direct to the source?

[horlock07]

What the fuck are they planning at the Town End that's going to cost £15m, Stevenage are building a new end stand at the moment and the budget is c.£1m, been trying to get a figure for the works at Exeter but struggling (incidentally have they bought part of Barnet's ground to re-erect?)

Its not as if the car park is very big for any form of enabling development, but that £15m seems bloody high to me?

[theakston2k]

Well go back to them and ask for clarification if you're not happy with the answers. Nothing wrong with asking for greater clarity but asking questions of people on here who can only speculate or give their own interpretation seems a bit pointless when you can go direct to the source?

Isn't that the point of a forum?

Lets be honest here this has been going on for over a year and very little has come out from the Trust which with the level of funding they are chasing is pretty poor. When you ask questions you get referred to the minutes and the leaflets that was handed out during the AGM which is fair enough and gives some information but as I said is ambiguous. I appreciate they all have day jobs but by now I just feel we should know more and it shouldn't be down to individuals to go chasing basic things like how will this allow the club to get 365 income. They are saying they want to raise the £1 million+ over the next 6 months and I just feel there is a void of information that needs to addressed as it's notoriously difficult to get a large proportion of our fanbase to support things like this at the best of times.

I am going to sound very selfish here but my only concern is the club moving forward, I don't have any interest in community aspects as I live over 50 miles away these days so it's of no benefit to me. I just want the club to increase it's turnover and move forward as a football club which is why the 365 income for the the club is key to me, it's a selfish viewpoint but I'd imagine it's a similar view point to many others especially out of town supporters.

[horlock07]

Isn't that the point of a forum?

Lets be honest here this has been going on for over a year and very little has come out from the Trust which with the level of funding they are chasing is pretty poor. When you ask questions you get referred to the minutes and the leaflets that was handed out during the AGM which is fair enough and gives some information but as I said is ambiguous. I appreciate they all have day jobs but by now I just feel we should know more and it shouldn't be down to individuals to go chasing basic things like how will this allow the club to get 365 income. They are saying they want to raise the £1 million+ over the next 6 months and I just feel there is a void of information that needs to addressed as it's notoriously difficult to get a large proportion of our fanbase to support things like this at the best of times.

I am going to sound very selfish here but my only concern is the club moving forward, I don't have any interest in community aspects as I live over 50 miles away these days so it's of no benefit to me. I just want the club to increase it's turnover and move forward as a football club which is why the 365 income for the the club is key to me, it's a selfish viewpoint but I'd imagine it's a similar view point to many others especially out of town supporters.

I think the simple answer to your question is simply they don't have an answer and hence the ambiguity of response?

Now if the proposal for the Town End was for some manner of incorporation of say corporate facilities/executive boxes etc it would be comparatively easy to quantify and explain a process for that as they would just be leased to the club as part of the ground, the club could operate and tak the income, possibly with some triggers on rent uplifts profit share that kind of nonsense.

The problem arises if the development is actually only being done to fund the works to the ground and does not provide any revenue opportunity. Again take the Town End as an example its not going to be a prime spot for football hospitality, to me it would seem most sensible to get a decent single tier stand built for a couple of mill, possibly with a decent leisure facility to the rear for fans (but that would majorly piss off the CGH), as part of this get PP for some residential/commercial use on the car park (part of probably as some parking will need to be retained) and then reinvest the cash in finally opening up the mythical Don Rogers second concourse for corporate facilities which would potentially provide a 365 revenue for the club and be included in the lease terms?

[pauld]

Isn't that the point of a forum?

Lets be honest here this has been going on for over a year and very little has come out from the Trust which with the level of funding they are chasing is pretty poor. When you ask questions you get referred to the minutes and the leaflets that was handed out during the AGM which is fair enough and gives some information but as I said is ambiguous. I appreciate they all have day jobs but by now I just feel we should know more and it shouldn't be down to individuals to go chasing basic things like how will this allow the club to get 365 income. They are saying they want to raise the £1 million+ over the next 6 months and I just feel there is a void of information that needs to addressed as it's notoriously difficult to get a large proportion of our fanbase to support things like this at the best of times.

Yes I get the point - communication from the Trust has been poor. If you're just looking to sound off about the Trust's comms being a bit shit, then fair enough, make that point here or wherever you like. Although, again, I'd suggest if you want the Trust to improve their comms you'd be better off telling them than complaining about it on a forum. Or do both, of course. But if you actually want answers to your questions (as opposed to posing the questions as rhetorical questions to poke holes in the proposals), they are the people who can provide them so you're best off asking them, rather than asking people on here for their opinions of what the answers might be.

[Summerof69]

I've been asked to post this :

Since our last May fans meeting (which was fully documented on TrustSTFC.tv), we did a newsletter in July, August, November, and January and just had the AGM which again is documented and up on the site now. This has been sent out via our newsletter this evening, and has been promoted on Facebook and Twitter. The AGM pack is available for download on that page and it covers last year's questions and also this year's questions.




http://truststfc.tv/2018-agm-summary 




In between all of these newsletters we did press releases, Facebook, Twitter, answered many individual emails, did several radio interviews and covered off many of the questions being asked in the forums at the AGM itself. Accusations of non-communication are way off the mark and if anyone did not receive the newsletter, it's likely to be because of technical reasons, spam filters, ISP issues etc. Please email info@truststfc.com if you believe you're experiencing issues and we can try and help.




It's worth highlighting that there are long periods (such as now) where the council are deliberating and going through their process  (as has been communicated in our press releases, newsletters, website articles and radio interviews) . Often times there are no new updates - and often we are waiting to hear on the next steps ourselves.




Some of our discussions are subject to Non-Disclosure Agreements, there is nothing we can do about that - the parties involved expect that level of professionalism.




We've had strong donations from local companies and we are in a good position financially, your contributions to the Red Army Fund are totally appreciated and have helped massively to-date, but as we explained last night - if you are struggling for cash or no longer want to contribute, then please go ahead and cancel. The fund will be used for the County Ground promotional campaign and for future fan related projects - if we end up with a surplus for whatever reason, then we will have a vote on how to spend the balance.




Please read the summary and the Infographics that we handed out at the AGM and keep a positive outlook, alternatively we welcome ideas on how to improve fan engagement and we also welcome further volunteers who may be able to help our work.

[jayohaitchenn]

Ah so they have been excellent at communication and we're just all wrong. That's me convinced.

Fucking Holt-esque.

[pauld]

I've been asked to post this :

OK and that's all well and good, but it's just an extended justification of the comms the Trust have already done. And clearly from the posts on here, people have read that and still have questions (and in at least one case has contacted the Trust directly and got an answer he thought was vague and added nothing to what had already been said). So perhaps rather than going on the defensive about how good the comms have been or not, might be an idea to get someone to have a trawl through the thread and directly answer some of the questions raised rather than re-pointing people to the info already posted as that clearly doesn't answer the questions. Or just tell everyone to fuck off if you like, your call

[RWB Robin]

.....and from memory, each of the newsletters circulated began 'Sorry that we have not been in touch recently....' or words to that effect!!!

[horlock07]

Ah so they have been excellent at communication and we're just all wrong. That's me convinced.

Fucking Holt-esque.

That's harsh, at least they have released it on a Friday which, for me at least, is a welcome acknowledgement of a fine club tradition.

Its all very well getting Summerof69 to post it (And thanks for doing so) but if the Trust have something to say, come on here and say it, actually put your head above the parapet through direct engagement, minds could be put at rest, it still has the air of we are doing something but its too complicated for you so don't worry your pretty heads about it, we know best!

But is glad to know its all the fans fault, I know its different but Power would get destroyed if he replied to the questions from the fans regarding lack of information in the same way....

[Don Rogers Sock]

Imagine if Andrew Steele Davis popped on here and said Lee has asked me to post on here and tell you we are hoping to buy the ground still and you are all wrong about him not telling you anything.