Stadium Latest

The council will now, at a meeting of the Special Cabinet on Tuesday, February 28, decide whether or not to offer the stadium developer, Extreme Leisure, an option agreement for them to purchase the Peaks Parkway site, in order to "provide the necessary council commitment to enable and facilitate further investment into the Community Stadium project."

Which you can read all about here - https://www.nelincs.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Community-Stadium-Report.pdf

£24-25 million has been budgeted for the stadium alone. Report compares it to Rotherham which cost £20m in 2013, and Scunthorpe's planned new stadium which also has a £25m budget.

So to summarise:

- Peaks Parkway was ranked third in the study of available sites conducted by the council - behind Garth Lane and Europarc - but owners weren't interested in getting involved with development, so Peaks Parkway is the de facto best option.

- Blundell Park worth less than £800k

- GTFC estimated to be about £30m short of funds required.  It is assumed Extreme will provide investment to cover some of that.

- Additional funds most likely to be derived from additional bank loans or equity exchanges.  Initial inquiries made to Lloyds Bank and Yorkshire Bank indicate an interest rate of circa 5.5% could be achievable.

- Three floodlit 4G pitches, plus two grass community pitches, complete with changing facilities, will be included in the development.

- Will include 'Public transport interchange to ensure sustainable transport methods'

- Stadium will be 14,000 capacity with option to increase to 20,100.

- 2000 capacity car park on site.

One thing which I am still not clear about is the equity arrangement between the council, GTFC and Extreme.  I'd assume, like other developments of this sort, that the council will manage the stadium with GTFC having to pay fees to use it?  It remains to be seen how much of the revenue from gate receipts and corporate events will be made available to the club.

Admittedly on a quick scan i read that as if the Council's only involvement is in selling the land . So council gets a large capital receipt circa 1m to spend on whatever it sees fit but no other involvement.  That's why the report says no OBC business case required as it's a commercial matter for a private company to work out how the shortfall is met or the income is distributed (between the developer and gtfc)  I.e. no public money.

Quoted from Swansea_Mariner

Admittedly on a quick scan i read that as if the Council's only involvement is in selling the land . So council gets a large capital receipt circa 1m to spend on whatever it sees fit but no other involvement.  That's why the report says no OBC business case required as it's a commercial matter for a private company to work out how the shortfall is met I.e. no public money.

Yes, I also saw that.

Full passage:
" Should the developer decide to take up the option to purchase the land, the Council would generate a further capital receipt. The exact amount is still to be determined and could be generated via a fixed price mechanism or on overage arrangement whereby the Council receive a percentage of the uplift in value derived from the granting of planning permission.

As the Council does not currently have other plans for development at the Peaks Parkway site, the amount would be an additional capital receipt available for reinvestment to support Council priorities. Clearly the development of a community stadium would generate significant wider economic benefits for the area in the form of inward investment, jobs and additional business rates."

So if Extreme do buy the land required then one would assume the development is theirs to own and manage?

That's how I interpret that MarrinerDevil. So if that is correct  Extreme, GTFC and the other private equity partners would have a share of the income from all outlets, be that retail let's, leisure whatever.

I can't imagine we'd be privy to what that is though until we see the accounts in X years time.

Yep, seems that way.

An ideal scenario for us would be for Extreme to fund the construction of the stadium by purchasing equity in the club.  They would earn revenue from the sporting facilities, such as the ice rink, retail and housing, while GTFC would be entitled to most of capital generated from the stadium.  

Extreme would earn money from lease fees and any profits from GTFC shares.

But I'm not in this sort of business for a reason and I'm sure that the actual picture will be a lot more complicated than that!

Yeah, that's the way I read it. Extreme would own the land. Net cost of the stadium development c £30m.

Have to say that that hasn't made me think 'this is going to happen', or the if it does the club will be reasonably financially secure.

Says it's outside the scope of the report to work on the business case for the Club or Extreme. £30m is a big number to cover. Anyone got a feel for how much profit the developer could make on enabling residential development on the land not used for the stadium?

This is not a million miles from numbers bandied around before, so to me it doesn't actually move things on. Still waiting to see how the club can afford this (some numbers and not just 'conferencing/other non-matchday activity').

30m is a big number but so to is 250k for a new house but of course families buy those every day I.e. the  30m will be spead over I'm guessing 60 years so 500k per annum, just as any other development such as a school, hospital, hotel etc.

Quoted from Swansea_Mariner

30m is a big number but so to is 250k for a new house but of course families but those every day I.e. the  30m will be spead over I'm guessing 60 years so 500k per annum, just as any other development such as a school, hospital, hotel etc.

It's a big old mortgage.  It also relies on the club being able to guarantee interest payments during that time too.  Fenty isn't going to be around forever to pay it down.  Hopefully the club have a continuity plan in place to mitigate the risk, and that the new stadium will attract new investors into the club to keep us going.