David Sullivan and David Gold spent years at Birmingham City trying to get the council to fund a new stadium for them. Once it was never going to happen, they moved to West Ham and they got a new stadium paid for by the taxpayer. It was a long play game, played by successful business people who had political influences.
West Ham will be anchor tenants for the Olympic Stadium after the government agreed to put in an extra £25m towards the costs of converting the venue. The additional money takes the Treasury's contribution to around £60m. Adapting the stadium is estimated to cost between £150m and £190m.
Initially West Ham had been reluctant to pay anything, but over time they increased their contribution to £10m and are now prepared to pay £15m to secure the deal and to pay £2m a year in rent when they move in. Also as anchor tenants West Ham can veto any usage that could negatively affect their business.
Not a bad outcome.
On the 22nd March, 2015 The Observer stated on the aftermath of Tottenham's failed Olympic stadium bid, and what Levy then managed to extract from London mayor Boris Johnson, and others, by way of compensation, 'Tottenham lost the bid, with Levy by all accounts furious with Johnson for leading him up a garden path, but only after the club's legal challenges had helped make less generous the deal offered by the public purse to the pornography magnates who run West Ham. Spurs made a further challenge, eventually called off, after which Johnson announced some funding to assist Tottenham, and the area around the stadium in particular. Tottenham also went back to Haringey to ask for a better deal on their planning permission: they wanted the requirement to build affordable housing, usual with proposed residential developments, to be removed. They wanted their Section 106 contribution, the money paid to help the public costs associated with private development, and which here included such things as upgrading nearby railway stations, reduced from £16.4m to £500,000. By now the riots had happened and Haringey, probably anxious to see something make progress in Tottenham, agreed to the reductions.'
Yes, Tottenham also managed to get the taxpayer to help with close to £25m, in return for clearing up an area affected by the London riots. Is that what Levy wanted all along?
The reality is football fills stadiums, athletics doesn't and that would have been central to the planning and construction of the now Etihad stadium. Manchester City Council have a great deal, and a fantastically beneficial working relationship with Manchester City, all of which was in place before any work commenced on the City of Manchester Stadium. If London and the people involved in the Olympics had put personal interests to one side and looked at how Manchester dealt with the long term legacy of the Commonwealth Games they perhaps would have secured a far better deal for the taxpayers.
Leyton Orient chairman Barry Hearn said "We have ended up in situation where we have gifted £500m of tax-payers' money to a Premier League club that has a turnover of more than £100m. It's a wonderful gift but if I was an Arsenal fan I would wonder why we bothered paying to build a new stadium.This is state sponsorship beyond my wildest dreams. In effect it's rent free as they have ability to develop Upton Park."
What does the future hold for West Ham who, when they play Newcastle on Monday, September 14, kids will get in for £1 because they struggle to sell out Upton Park. Where are the new fans waiting to fill this new stadium?
Is that when the Bubbles burst?
No comments:
Post a Comment