Does anyone know and if so can explain how other "community" stadiums have been funded? and what the local council's role was?
Hull’s KC stadium is the best example of a community stadium development.
I’m pretty familiar with it as I actually worked for Kingston Communications up in Hull (stadium sponsors) at the time it reached completion.
Hull City council invested approx £42 million and could do so as they not only retained full ownership of the site but integrated a large amount of community facilities for the residents of Hull within the project. This allowed the cost to be entirely justified as it was not going to benefit solely the football club, a private limited company.
The land the KC is built upon is pretty low grade/low value but by the same rights the CG site is governed by the sporting covenant, which dictates what it can/can’t be used for.
As far as I can see the proposed development is pretty similar except that private housing on the site is used to essentially fund the building of the stadium. Similar to the KC I’d then expect the stadium to be run by a management company but ownership is still essentially retained by the council.
At the end of the day we then have all the advantages of a shiny new stadium that should have fewer overheads to operate and additional facilities providing income through different sources.
It's pretty much the only way we can go without a serious amount of cash or ownership of a site to trade off.
Bit unrelated but I’ve read mention that the site includes first time buyers properties, can anyone confirm? If this is the case then it seriously strengthens our hand when it comes to justifying the project. There’s a specific housing initiative that I can’t name off the top of my head specific to Swindon plus the Government’s first time buyers scheme. Having seen similar developments in other areas take advantage of using first time buyers to get a site the green light it is encouraging. Plus again to a degree it justifies the building of commercial property on council land as it’s in the ‘communities’ interest.
Not seen the article or plans so wouldn’t want to comment but the infrastructure certainly sounds like it’s in place.
