One of the most controversial proposals for stadium-led regeneration is in Manchester. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the Monaco-based billionaire co-owner of Manchester United, is making the case for building a “Wembley of the North” (originally an idea that Port Vale had many years ago) — referring to the £750mn national stadium in London that was built with private and public funding and boosted the local area through investment in roads, rail and routes for pedestrians.
Ratcliffe argues that a new 100,000-seat stadium can “be the
catalyst for social and economic renewal of the Old Trafford area”. The
project’s cheerleaders have requested more than £200mn in June’s spending
review to unlock development around the stadium.
The funds would ostensibly pay to remove an adjacent freight
terminal to open up space for the new stadium. Influential Mayor Andy Burnham has argued that moving the terminal would help address one
of the north’s most acute rail bottlenecks, thereby representing an economic
investment in the region that goes beyond any benefits to the club.
Burnham has previously expressed confidence that the money
would be secured in the June spending review. However, three people familiar
with discussions told the Pink 'Un that the Treasury has been reticent to commit until the club’s
own financing is made clear.
United, whose biggest
voting shareholders are members of the US-based Glazer family, are not seeking
government funds for the stadium itself, which could cost £2bn, but want
support for development of the surrounding area. “If the government really gets
behind this regeneration scheme . . . we will build it,” Ratcliffe told the
Financial Times.
Speaking at the launch event, Lord Sebastian Coe, who led
the task force exploring what to do about Old Trafford, compared the situation
in west Manchester to that in east London before the 2012 summer Olympics. Coe
chaired the organising committee for those games.
Some 92,000 new jobs
could be created as a result of such a project, according to the club “Attached
to that are homes, jobs, businesses, educational establishments and the largest
retail development anywhere in Europe for 25 years.” Coe added: “This project
in Manchester, built around the reconstruction of a football stadium, has the
potential to be bigger.”
However, the proposal has been met with scepticism among
those who believe the plans have not been fully thought through, that the wider
transport benefits have been exaggerated, or that the project could simply line
the pockets of the club’s owners.
United “don’t own the land, they’ve not got a detailed
stadium design, they haven’t got the funding”, says Chong at Everton. “From
what I can see there’s no strategic plan for how they are going to achieve
that.”
Others are even more forthright. “It is intolerable that
public money, at a time of cuts in welfare spending, should be used to help a
tax exile,” said Manchester MP and United supporter Graham Stringer, who was
part of the original bid in the 1990s to bring the Commonwealth Games to the
city.
Chong at Everton is wrong when he says “United don’t own the land”. They own the freehold and Freightliner lease their site from United. The lease has about 50 years to run and would need to be bought out if the new ground and regeneration is to proceed.
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