council want to talk to Town about new stadium

Quoted from Poojah

It was merely a quick way to highlight the oversimplification of your list of clubs who have supposedly borrowed large sums of money, built stadiums and flourished. Since that apparently wasn't sufficient, I'll elaborate.

First and foremost, Hull don't own their stadium - it was paid for and is owned by Hull City Council, in turn funded by the curious local monopoly that is (or at least was) Kingston Communications. Reading's Madejski Stadium was largely funded (in the shape of interest free loans) by their owner John Madejski, a man with a current net worth of around £250m.

Swansea's Liberty Stadium is also council funded and owned. Wigan's then called JJB Stadium was funded outright by Dave Whelan (owner of JJB). Coventry's Ricoh Stadium has never been owned by the club and has been an absolute disaster. Rotherham, which you didn't mention, were handed a sizeable £5m loan by their local council to help cover the costs of their New York Stadium. Even Man City's ground is owned by the council - where would they be today had Manchester not hosted the 2002 Commonwealth Games?

If you want a real success story, go and take a look at Brighton. Tony Bloom lent the club the full £90 required to fund the AMEX Stadium, interest free, and his total loans to the club now exceed £350m. No problem, since the club is now worth considerably more than that. Speculate to accumulate, as long as you do it well.

My point is this, whilst not the only ways to fund a stadium, having a wealthy benefactor and / or a helpful council makes life significantly easier. We have had neither of those - just a blinkered, incompetent buffoon chasing a slew of pipe dream enabling developments and a disinterested, visionless local council. Even now,  we have apparently competent owners but I don't think they quite fall into 'wealthy benefactor' territory.

So, since you inferred it might be a sensible way forward, why don't our competent new owners go and competently borrow the money? Simple answer - because they can't, at least nowhere near enough to fund it on its own.

If Town were to build a new stadium to a desirable standard, you're looking at a bill of somewhere in the region of £30m. Naming rights, grants etc. could cover some of that but you're still looking at a shortfall north of £20m. No financial institution is going to lend a struggling, non-league club that kind of sum with no security.

That's the problem with stadiums - they don't work like normal property. If I default on my mortgage, the bank can repossess an asset worth more than my outstanding loan (unless I'm in negative equity, but that's the reason you don't see 100% mortgages anymore). But if a stadium costs £30m to build, its actual market value is substantially (and I mean substantially) less than that. It's barely worth anything to anyone but the club.

Case in point, Darlington Arena cost £18m to build in 2003 (so in today's construction money, that's about £35m+). When they went out of business, it was eventually sold to local rugby club Mowden Park for £2m, about 5% of its real terms build cost.

So, wrapping up, Jason Stockwood said that a new stadium was not a 'priority', not that it wasn't 'important'. That's very different. When you draw up a priority list, you don't just put all the really big, important stuff at the top - you have to temper that with things that can make small differences and yet be delivered quickly. A lot of things have been allowed to rot during the pursuit of the doomed Fentydome, and they need fixing.

I am sure that a new stadium remains very much on the new owners' agenda, but we have a number of holes to plug first. A redeveloped BP is probably the most pragmatic option since we already own the land and could redevelop a stand at a time, reducing the borrowing burden. Whether that's the right thing, I'm not sure. However, I am confident that all options will be considered and when the time is right, the best one will be pursued subject to a level of due diligence that has been grossly lacking in all previous failed attempts.

Quoted from promotion plaice

No offence Poojah mate but I don't read books  

Quoted from grimsby pete

Just knock the main stand down and build a new one that stretchers the full length of the pitch and fill in the other corners that will give us a 12,000 capacity which is enough for a good few years.

Look at it again if we get to the championship and decide if we need a brand new stadium and a load of debt.

Quoted from jamesgtfc

I've often thought that we should look to extend the Findus and then move on to rebuilding the Main Stand and Osmond at the same height as they are now.

Quoted from grimsby pete

Just knock the main stand down and build a new one that stretchers the full length of the pitch and fill in the other corners that will give us a 12,000 capacity which is enough for a good few years.

Look at it again if we get to the championship and decide if we need a brand new stadium and a load of debt.

Quoted from pen penfras

Redeveloping BP will cost more than building a new stadium, plus there's very little way to recover any costs from an enabling development or sponsorship. And the suggestion to spend £10M+ then think about binning that off if we get to the championship, is absurd. Although we'll unlikely get there in the next 20 years, so I guess it's a moot point.

Quoted from mimma

Unfortunately, I don't think the residents and council would be too keen on all the upheaval, Pete. As I mentioned before, the council said that they would not be that open to rebuilding, which led us to start looking at moving to Great Coates.