New Stadium Details And Discussions

[nightgoat]

If there is a redesign, which is still speculation, then it would either be for some reason which is out of our hands or because Levy feels it's right for the project.

 

[chrissivad]

there has been nothing to say how big or small the re-design will be.

Was the Kop end in the original design? or we could see much larger changes

 

[camaj]

there has been nothing to say how big or small the re-design will be.

Or if there will be one.

 

[Flynn]

he said earlier that KSS weren't involved anymore and going back to them was "Plan B"

he also said that it should be quiet on the stadium for the next few months probably, except for maybe another stage of approval

here are the posts:

Levy has found someone else to build it. They've just got to finish tarmacking his mums drive and they'll pop around in the morning.

 

[DogsOfWar]

I think the size of the season ticket queue is irrelevant as that only applies to the current stadium, the re-developed WHL will be a whole new attraction.

An improved stadium, transport links, and local infrastructure will increase the appeal of going to WHL for current supporters as well as attracting a new generation of fans.
I have no doubt that we will be playing in front of full houses every week. Levy doesn't get a lot wrong and certainly not on the 'business' side of running Spurs.

 

[etchedchaos]

Levy has found someone else to build it. They've just got to finish tarmacking his mums drive and they'll pop around in the morning.

She's dead.

 

[Mister Jez]

Levy has found someone else to build it. They've just got to finish tarmacking his mums drive and they'll pop around in the morning.

Daniel lost his Mum around the time 'Arry was begging for a new contract. Your post is in poor taste. Sorry

 

[tommyt]

Give the guy a break ffs.

 

[Flynn]

Daniel lost his Mum around the time 'Arry was begging for a new contract. Your post is in poor taste. Sorry

You're right, I'd forgotten about that. For the record I value what Levy has done for the club very highly. I appreciate this misguided attempt at humour has missed the mark

 

[Mister Jez]

You're right, I'd forgotten about that. For the record I value what Levy has done for the club very highly. I appreciate this misguided attempt at humour has missed the mark

I'm sure it was not meant maliciously. Your apology is gracious enough

 

[danielneeds]

Could this have anything to do with the delay with the training ground? Spurs didn't seem happy with the finish and it took an extra (what?) 2 months to get everything right?

That was reportedly because of the awfully wet spring we had last year... Just like this year too.

 

[worcestersauce]

Well who's drive was it then?

 

[Spursidol]

He did say a week or so back that there would be nothing happening soon though. So not sure where this info sits

This is from SO :

Cobbled together from what is in the public domain, the following is an indicative timetable IF the stadium build begins in early 2014.

Early 2014............Stadium stage A build begins (16 -18 months)
Summer 2015.......Demolition of Paxton Road stand; pitch laid in new stadium.
.............................Stadium stage B build begins (12 months)
Season 2015-16...Played in the two-thirds finished new stadium (capacity about 38k)
Summer 2016.......New stadium complete
Season 2016-17...First season in the complete stadium
.............................Old stadium demolition completed
.............................Southern Development begins

However, the most reliable ITK indicates that a start date has not yet been set. Lammy tweeted earlier in the year that Levy had told him it would be after December 2013, but how long after is the key question.

From what we know, the following are issues that may need to be sorted out and could well delay the above start...

- Remaining property purchase to be negotiated or CPO to be completed. Likely to be by the end of the year.
- The 'High Road West' (or what we used to call the 'Stadium Approach') project must be consulted on and receive planning permission (six months at the very least, but there is bound to be opposition... a public inquiry would set the whole thing back, for example).
- There may or may not be some enabling money to come out of High Road West, and that could have a crucial effect on the finances of the stadium.
- The rebuilding of WHL station needs to be funded from somewhere. We heard there were talks with National Rail (or whoever could provide finances).
- There's talk of investment in the line going through Northumberland Park. More frequent, quick trains to Stratford will make a big difference to how well N Tottenham is connected to London. This in turn will affect how well the finances of the Southern Development work. And that must generate enabling finance for the stadium.
- A naming rights deal needs to be negotiated and concluded. It may be the case that the wider issues above could have an effect on its value. Don't know.
- The stadium project must be financed. As discussed earlier, we are not in a good climate for financing a project of this nature. The finance package is likely to be a complex jigsaw, linking naming rights (possibly with front-loading), bank loans, possibly a bond issue, possibly a rights issue, possibly premium seats sold in advance, an as yet indeterminate amount of enabling finance from the Southern Development (which in turn depends on some of the above issues being resolved, most importantly the transport connections), possibly other enabling finance (Brook House? High Road West?) as well as finance coming soon from the Northern Development.
- There's a bottom line, I guess. We must continue to be able to spend on wages and in the transfer market in order to maintain the current level of success. Indeed there is an argument for greater spending so we don't get left so far behind by Woolwich, Chelsea and Man City that we are no longer competing for 4th place. If we fall back in our success, then there is a risk that, in the current belt-tightening climate, the new stadium will not be as lucrative as we hope and the finances begin to unravel. We cannot finance this stadium 'on the edge', as it were. Woolwich did that and were caught out by a property slump. They've managed to struggle through, but on a platform of much greater on-pitch success. We can't afford fine margins like this. We are obliged to be prudent.

So my guess: it's likely we are waiting for the public authorities to come through with concrete, approved plans for High Road West, the rebuilding of WHL station and the Northumberland Park line improvements. That's a lot to do with political will and a serious commitment to the regeneration of N Tottenham.

My update on it :
The consultation process with 3 options that Harringay started runs to 21 June. http://www.tottenhamjournal.co.uk/news/tottenham_redevelopment_plans_opened_for_public_consultation_1_2175897
After that they need to collate the results and decide what message has come back - are people up for a huge redevelopment or a much more constrained development ? On the back of it I hope Spurs have a developer lined up to put in a planning application for the Stadium Way area.....so that might take until August to be approved as a minimum (even if they have the plan pretty much completed now) - its in all 3 of the Harringay options. Of course if there is oppposition, it could take considerably longer.

Not sure on timing for the rail improvements and WHL station improvement, or indeed how that gets pushed forward.


So in summary, lots of balls in the air which are not in our hands, so we may well be into a 'watching mode' to see how all the others (Harrigay, TFL et al) progress their projects. Whether Spurs also want to put in a revised stadium planning application in addition, I have no idea whether that is on the agenda, but even without there are lots of reasons why there may not be any immediate news. But hopefully we will also see progress from other stakeholders.

 

[Lilbaz]

Few things wrong with that.

Station and Tottenham way are nothing to do with us, the government will pay for that.

The southern development will not start until the stadium is completed. We are not relying on the money.

Arsenal did not struggle the payments were easily met and arsenals profit and turnover increased after the stadium was built. The sale of the Highbury flats although less than what they expected was pure profit.

 

[davidmatzdorf]

The southern development will not start until the stadium is completed. We are not relying on the money.

We are not relying on the cash flow. That's different than saying that we are not relying on the sales receipts from the housing. I'd say that the sales values of the housing units represent one of the major, crucial variables in the whole NDP. I expect the injection of cash from the housing to be used, just as Arsenal did, to reduce the balance of long term borrowed money, when the NDP is refinanced from short term borrowing to long term borrowing, as we near the end of the project.

If there is another housing crash after we have set the business plan for the whole NDP and the stadium is being built, we could have a major shortfall to resolve when we want to convert to long term financing. Partly, this depends on whether the club undertakes the development of the housing directly or takes on a residential development partner to do it. I would think they will do the latter, partly to rope in people with experience of specifying, building and marketing major residential developments, but also to lay off some of the risk of fluctuations in the market onto the development partner.

In such a deal, there would probably be a base price that the developer would pay, in stages, for the housing land, and an additional "overage" figure that would be linked to any increases in sales values over the original valuations. That way, the club would be insulated against a major crash (not so the residential developer), but would have to forego a large percentage of any windfall profits from any increase in London residential property values.

Arsenal did not struggle the payments were easily met and arsenals profit and turnover increased after the stadium was built. The sale of the Highbury flats although less than what they expected was pure profit.

As you say, the profit was far lower than they anticipated, because a property crash intervened. This caused them considerable problems at exactly the stage I was describing above: when they were trying to convert the short term money used to build the scheme into long term financing. Their original business plan had a figure for long term borrowing and that figure initially went way down, as the development proceeded during a residential boom. Then, suddenly, it went way up again during the crash, compounded by the fact that a large number of flats at Highbury that had been "sold", in the sense that contracts had been exchanged "off plan", but the buyers never completed the sales.

Those buyers (mainly overseas investors) dropped their 10% deposits and walked away, rather than complete their puchases of flats that were suddenly worth 20%+ less than they were paying for them. This caused Arsenal some considerable cash flow headaches, but more importantly, they had to scramble around arranging a much larger amount of long term finance (and the collateral required to secure it) than they had been expecting.

It then took a couple of years to shift the unsold flats and substantial discounts were offered to attract buyers.

 

[Lilbaz]

Their matchday revenue went from around £30m to just under £100m. Are you telling me that the interest payments for the stadium were more than £70m a season?

 

[Graysonti]

Their matchday revenue went from around £30m to just under £100m. Are you telling me that the interest payments for the stadium were more than £70m a season?

Bang on

Without the stadium, we're fooled, period.

 

[davidmatzdorf]

Their matchday revenue went from around £30m to just under £100m. Are you telling me that the interest payments for the stadium were more than £70m a season?

No, I'd think not - neither of us have any idea - they've obviously done wonderfully well out of the new stadium, but that's a totally separate issue and it's also 20:20 hindsight.

They had a major issue with the borrowing at the time of the crash. They had expected to have to convert £XXXm to long term finance and suddenly that figure rocketed way up and their agreed financing arrangements wouldn't cover it. They had to rearrange their financing and it was something of a panic. I recall that, initially, this not only resulted in a higher principal for the borrowing, but higher interest rates as well. Then they had an opportunity to refinance the refinancing and they were OK. They came out of it successfully and have since turned the bigger stadium into a major generator of revenue, which in turn enables them to pay the wages we cannot afford.

Your point doesn't invalidate what I wrote - it just shows that there are many complexities involved in getting a successful development completed and making it profitable, a point I have made many times in this thread.

Our proposed residential development has a couple of slight advantages. We aren't in a neighbourhood that is prone to inflated prices during a boom (such as Islington), but we are in a neighbourhood that has never been subjected to the rises in value associated with gentrification. I hope that the relatively low values in Tottenham will dissuade the club and its lenders from making overly bullish assumptions about "hope value" - and so will memories of the recent crash. But there are sound reasons to hope that the very existence of the NDP and other regeneration-led developments around the High Rd will support increases in value as the neighbourhood is improved and the new housing appears in the market. That's what happened in several deprived areas of Hackney and Tower Hamlets when regeneration schemes of a similar magnitude came onstream, most recently around Dalston Junction.

And there is still a structural shortage of housing in London, which is one reason why London property prices continue to rise out of all proportion to London incomes. Another reason is the pernicious influence of overseas investors, who snap up 30%-50% of new build housing units and rent them out whilst they wait for property values to inflate in the next boom. But there is never a real oversupply of housing in London, only transient reluctance to buy when there is a panic or a lending bottleneck.

 

[Lilbaz]

How much will we need to borrow? I believe we have bought most of the land already. The total cost of the project is meant to be £400m + but how much of that has already been spent?

We need to be very careful ofcourse, we don't want to end up like valencia.

 

[L.A. Yiddo]

Just posted on SkyscraperCity by 'RMB2007':-

Sent David Keirle an email in regards to the rumour about KSS not being involved with the stadium part, and his reply was this:

Quote:

No not a runout THFC have engaged Populous to look at other options. Such is life! Fat lady isn't singing yet but ....​

So, the KSS design could still be used, but Tottenham are indeed looking at other options with Populous. I'm sure many on here will know what stadiums Populous have designed in the past, however, here's the link to their site:

http://populous.com/