council want to talk to Town about new stadium

Quoted from pen penfras

Which company is this? He has 440 appointments on companies house, I assumed the one I'd heard of would be the biggest, but maybe there's a bigger one?

Quoted from MuddyWaters

Where do you start? Only one stand is fit for purpose.

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.

Quoted from Limerick Mariner

That's my worry as well. As others have said the funding by enabling development boat (the Chesterfield approach) has sailed. I'm not sure the joined-up local government skills needed to secure government and other grants for land assembly, enabling infrastructure and stadium itself (the Doncaster and Rotherham approach) ever existed or ever will exist in NE Lincs.

GTFC will never deliver a stadium without that package of funding linked to beneficial community outcomes other than just a football stadium. Apart from at the top level I doubt any stadium of scale has been delivered without that or an enabling development, save for the one-off eccentric sugar daddy's like Dale Vince.

So, there needs to be the coordination of the political will and competence within the local authority as well as the competence on the GTFC Board to project manage the funding and delivery. Perhaps 1878 know the former is lacking and hence the managing of expectations by them. Hope I'm wrong, but if not we'll be at BP for a long time. So some kind of phased upgrade will be required.

Quoted from Meza

It's very difficult for me to have any real input having moved away for over 20 yrs about the town.  I still visit the parents for my Sunday lunch (i try at least once a month) and when I'm passing through (sometimes different ways) there has been a few changes to the town (some good) and a few boarded up shops/areas yet to be knocked down/replaced.  I past the old birds eye factory/land mostly and it seems an age since anything is being done.  Here in Lincoln its pretty much knocked down and replaced (i know Lincoln has changed alot since i have been here compared to GY and i don't like it being a humble Grimbarian and desendant of Ethol Red the Unready   ).  Clearly the government funding in Lincoln etc is better, or the council are more progressive, compared to GY like the towns council all old hat scared of change or don't have the umpth in them to progress the town, like as if the council is a bit like Fenty was with GTFC just going nowhere, be interesting to hear other peoples opinions on the town.  

It feels as if the town is dying (from the outside), and having a football club in a community is massive, i wonder what would happen if there was no GTFC would the town still get the same amount of media, or would the town just become like a village  The club gives the town exposure but if the town looks dead no one will see GY as being a good investment.  I don't know maybe there are some good things brewing in GY like the energy sector (windfarm).  Would a new stadium give the town a new leash of life (well i hope) but the club also need the council to do their bit and improve the town for the better to attract investors and new owners etc.  

I can only hope for a new stadium as i think it would give the town a lift.

Quoted from MuddyWaters

Quite ironic given your comments on the ‘incoming striker’ thread.

Quoted from pen penfras

Lincoln doesn't need government funding as much. The city centre is a nice place and desirable. The centre of Grimsby is not. If people want to live there, then it's easy to redevelop because there's money that will pay for it. It's a really hard thing to start, but Grimsby needs to start making the town a better place rather than expanding the suburbs with a black hole in the middle.