council want to talk to Town about new stadium

Quoted from hampshiremariner

If Hull, Rotherham and Doncaster can acquire new stadiums, why can't we? It would be a massive boost for the area, but I think the chance has gone.

12 years of austerity under this terrible government and councils are skint. If I had the money I would donate it but the council would probably find a reason for it not to be built. Every barrier you could have imagined was put in the way of Town getting a new stadium in the past.

There is no money for levelling up. Like Brexit, it's a con. Johnson has just spent £350,000 getting a jet fighter to fly from Scotland to Waddington so he could have his photo taken in the cockpit. Truss spent £500,000 of OUR money to fly privately to Oz, rather than going on a much cheaper scheduled flight.

It's frustrating and annoying but levelling up is a load of rhetoric. Nothing more. Like telling us we have got all these new police officers on the streets. We haven't. They need to get thousands and thousands more just to get us back to where we were in 2010.

It's a era of disaster capitalism with the rich getting much, much richer and the rest of us facing inflation, fuel poverty, the running down of the NHS and public services being crushed by continuing austerity. That's the reality.

I'm no fan of the Tories but Tony Blair spent billions on an illegal war, not forgetting the thousands that died from it was well as failure in the aftermath led to the rise of ISIS.

What the fúck’s that got to do with funding this stadium?

Thank you Boris, on the champers already? Bit early even by our present government's standard.

Quoted from moosey_club

Pretty sure Grimsby West is dead as far as council involvement is concerned, they failed in their bid for funding I am sure I read so although housing may go on there it will be at the discretion design of the private developer.  

Thought that bid was just for the link road?

Any housing developments would still be subject to the standard planning contribution saga.

Quoted from arryarryarry

I'm no fan of the Tories but Tony Blair spent billions on an illegal war, not forgetting the thousands that died from it was well as failure in the aftermath led to the rise of ISIS.

Jeez, Dido Harding spent 37 billion on test & trace, free testing costs 2 billion every week etc etc but it’s not relevant to a privately financed football stadium.

All sorts of plans have been mooted by all sorts of people for a new Grimsby community stadium. Loads of other towns and clubs seem to have managed it, why can’t we?

Quoted from jamesgtfc

Who is going to foot the bill for the stadium and ultimately own it?
What are those 365 day uses going to be?
Are those 365 day uses going to turn a profit or be yet another cost to the organisation?
Where is the stadium going to be to ensure the 365 day uses are easily accessible for the appropriate target market?

It's not just that though is it, you have to consider the lifecycle costs of the asset. Blundell park is dilapidated and will require huge sums to  be brought up to modern standards and then maintained  for another 60-80 years.  That cost needs to be compared to the new build and subsequent significantly reduced ongoing maintenance costs.  Combining that with new revenue streams that cannot be achieved at Blundell Park will likely make a new stadium cheaper over its whole lifetime.

Also Town would never get planning permission becau6of the close proximity to the houses. The land that Town actually own is too small for what is needed.

For me the need for a new stadium is unarguable. If you look at the grounds of all current football league clubs, and those of historically league clubs currently playing in non-league, it’s a struggle to find any less modern than BP.

Accrington, Barrow, Crawley. Sutton, perhaps. Beyond that, I’m genuinely struggling. 4 out of 100 or so, in poorer condition than BP. The Findus Stand is 40 years old this year - how many grounds have seen zero meaningful improvement to facilities (outside of the Taylor Report) in that time? As for the remainder of the ground, most of that is nearly 120 years old ffs.

The existing site cannot be adequately redeveloped without the unlikely purchasing of the surrounding homes, and I see no advantage in doing that anyway. Land ownership isn’t the main issue. With the right funds, the right site exists in the town, wherever you personally believe that to be.

The single, most fundamental issue of all is finding those funds. And that ain’t going to be easy.

Golly gave the analogy of funding a house purchase via a mortgage. The trouble is, that analogy doesn’t quite work in practice since stadiums are not conventional assets in the way that residential properties are. The only reason banks will lend homeowners large sums of money over long periods of time is because they can repossess the asset in the event of default.

Technically, they could do the same with a stadium however doing so would not recoup any outstanding debt. That’s because if Town built a new stadium tomorrow, what it would be worth would be considerably less than what it cost. If Town became insolvent and went out of business, what value does a 14,000 seater stadium in Grimsby have, with no one to play in it? For reference, Darlington Arena cost £18m to build in 2003, and was sold for only £2m in 2012, after the football club had gone under. No conventional commercial lender is going to underwrite that level of risk.

Beyond that, my worry is that we’ve missed the boat to build a new ground. Despite the near normality our daily lives have returned to, the world we live in today is not the one we were living in this time two years ago. Be it the pandemic, Brexit or anything else, we are living in times of super-inflation. The cost of construction materials rose 23% last year, the cost of borrowing is rising whilst the availability of cheap, foreign labour has reduced considerably.

I’ll use the example of Rotherham as it’s probably the most relevant to what we’d be looking to do - a tidy, 12,000 seater stadium built on brownfield land close to the town centre. That cost £20m to build 10 years ago. If we were, miraculously, ready to break ground in 2-3 years time, I reckon we’d be looking at an overall construction cost of around £30m to pay for something of a similar size and standard.

That’s one hell of a lot of money for a club of Town’s size, however it’s funded. If it’s through debt, then that’s also a heavy millstone to wear around the club’s neck for the next couple of decades or so. Rotherham received a lot of help from their local council in the form of grants and loans. Other clubs rent stadiums paid for by councils. I’m not holding my breath on any such help from NELC.

We desperately need a more modern home to play football in. Using my head rather than my heart, I just don’t see a clear way it can be delivered in the remotely near future.

Quoted from Poojah

For me the need for a new stadium is unarguable. If you look at the grounds of all current football league clubs, and those of historically league clubs currently playing in non-league, it’s a struggle to find any less modern than BP.

Accrington, Barrow, Crawley. Sutton, perhaps. Beyond that, I’m genuinely struggling. 4 out of 100 or so, in poorer condition than BP. The Findus Stand is 40 years old this year - how many grounds have seen zero meaningful improvement to facilities (outside of the Taylor Report) in that time? As for the remainder of the ground, most of that is nearly 120 years old ffs.

The existing site cannot be adequately redeveloped without the unlikely purchasing of the surrounding homes, and I see no advantage in doing that anyway. Land ownership isn’t the main issue. With the right funds, the right site exists in the town, wherever you personally believe that to be.

The single, most fundamental issue of all is finding those funds. And that ain’t going to be easy.

Golly gave the analogy of funding a house purchase via a mortgage. The trouble is, that analogy doesn’t quite work in practice since stadiums are not conventional assets in the way that residential properties are. The only reason banks will lend homeowners large sums of money over long periods of time is because they can repossess the asset in the event of default.

Technically, they could do the same with a stadium however doing so would not recoup any outstanding debt. That’s because if Town built a new stadium tomorrow, what it would be worth would be considerably less than what it cost. If Town became insolvent and went out of business, what value does a 14,000 seater stadium in Grimsby have, with no one to play in it? For reference, Darlington Arena cost £18m to build in 2003, and was sold for only £2m in 2012, after the football club had gone under. No conventional commercial lender is going to underwrite that level of risk.

Beyond that, my worry is that we’ve missed the boat to build a new ground. Despite the near normality our daily lives have returned to, the world we live in today is not the one we were living in this time two years ago. Be it the pandemic, Brexit or anything else, we are living in times of super-inflation. The cost of construction materials rose 23% last year, the cost of borrowing is rising whilst the availability of cheap, foreign labour has reduced considerably.

I’ll use the example of Rotherham as it’s probably the most relevant to what we’d be looking to do - a tidy, 12,000 seater stadium built on brownfield land close to the town centre. That cost £20m to build 10 years ago. If we were, miraculously, ready to break ground in 2-3 years time, I reckon we’d be looking at an overall construction cost of around £30m to pay for something of a similar size and standard.

That’s one hell of a lot of money for a club of Town’s size, however it’s funded. If it’s through debt, then that’s also a heavy millstone to wear around the club’s neck for the next couple of decades or so. Rotherham received a lot of help from their local council in the form of grants and loans. Other clubs rent stadiums paid for by councils. I’m not holding my breath on any such help from NELC.

We desperately need a more modern home to play football in. Using my head rather than my heart, I just don’t see a clear way it can be delivered in the remotely near future.

It’s difficult to admit but Fenty was right about this. We needed, probably still need, a new ground to make the club financially viable. What he didn’t have is the network to deliver it.

I’m sure the new owners see Blundell Park as their biggest challenge. We can only sit and watch but the longer we stay out of the EFL, the longer we can/will tread water.

IMHO the inflationary cost of construction is immaterial, it stands for modifying existing assets or building new ones. Is anyone realistically going to argue the position that the status quo can be maintained indefinitely?

Unless we can do that then there is going to be a seven figure spend at some point if not cumulatively over a period of time. Is that money going to be wasted on redeveloping BP or instead will it contribute substantially towards something that will endure for the next 100 years as well as offering us potential new income streams that BP simply does not have the footprint to do?