Woking Community Stadium - Come See Our Plans

[Since85]

The first bit was 300 pages long, sod that War of The Worlds is on TV that also features Woking but much easier to sort out than this stadium,,why is life so complex?

[Meerkat]

Flicked through it really quickly so can’t guarantee I understand it
Council buys or CPOs everything it doesn’t own, then ground leases residential bits to Goldev for 260 years. Council gets land acquisition costs back in form of getting possession of c. £24m worth of completed residential properties.
WFC gets 12 monthly payments of 23k - is this to cover renting a ground in the interim?
Goldev buys Peter Jordan’s shares then transfers them to council - so the council will own WFC??
£10m budget to build a L1 compliant stadium, which council will own and lease to WFC.
Council lends Goldev up to £250m to build the development!!
Goldev needs a 20% profit on gross development value. Not sure if that means they can cut things to ensure that.

[Cardinal96]

Given £10m is very tight to build a stadium of this size, what would happen if that money runs out? Could we end up in a similar situation to AFC Wimbledon, needing to raise several £m ourselves or to avoid playing in an unfinished shell?

[DavetheBountyHunter]

I’m guessing that the council’s involvement prevents this from happening. Ultimately, the developer needs to deliver the ground before they can make their profits from it - so it’s pretty safe.

However you dress it up, the club aren’t really funding this.

[Meerkat]

The document states that £10m looks low because it doesn’t include demolition, site preparation, nor provision of services - all those will be provided by the larger development. The £10m will start with a flat bit of land ready to go.
I don’t know how watertight it is but having the specification of the stadium in the agreement is presumably to protect the club from what you are worried about - they need to leave the club with a L1 compliant ground.
My concern would be that I have read it all as saying the council will end up owning the football club, the ground, and being owed up to £250m. If a property crash made the development unviable the council would want its money back, and be in a control position to agree to a smaller ground to help that happen.
I skimmed the document very fast but didn’t see anything formalising the sequencing of building the ground - ie insisting that the stadium had to be ready before X number of residences were allowed to be sold???

[doylie]

I might be wrong but I scanned through the document last night and thought that £21m had been put aside for the stadium development alone and as Dave said the Council's involvement means that we're pretty much ring fenced.

[Mick.M]

At the meeting Thursday Dukelease guy said £21m for the stadium

[NeilC]

I’m guessing that the council’s involvement prevents this from happening. Ultimately, the developer needs to deliver the ground before they can make their profits from it - so it’s pretty safe.

However you dress it up, the club aren’t really funding this.

That’s how I read it - the up-fronts are pretty much provided by the council for a future return

[Reading Card]

£21m for the stadium is a good amount ! What an opportunity this is for the club.

I visited the new spurs ground recently- its a good facility. Apparently they do about 800k on f and b each game and I can see why. Every stand has a bar , brewery onsite, sky tv for the early and late game. Great food (home made sausage rolls, good pies) and at pretty reasonable prices too. It opens 2 hours before each game and stays open for 2 hours after - fans stay around after the match to have a beer , watch the late game and miss the traffic which is pretty much unheard of any ground I have been.

Point being , get it right and there is money to be made.

[skippy]

£21m for the stadium is a good amount ! What an opportunity this is for the club.

I visited the new spurs ground recently- its a good facility. Apparently they do about 800k on f and b each game and I can see why. Every stand has a bar , brewery onsite, sky tv for the early and late game. Great food (home made sausage rolls, good pies) and at pretty reasonable prices too. It opens 2 hours before each game and stays open for 2 hours after - fans stay around after the match to have a beer , watch the late game and miss the traffic which is pretty much unheard of any ground I have been.

Point being , get it right and there is money to be made.

Spencer from Dukelease is a spurs supporter and he mentioned the average spend per head at Tottenham in the new stadium compared to other places, it's over £7/head, at the old stadium and Chelsea it was about £3 and another London club it was about £4. Apparently the prices at Tottenham are aimed at being the same/lower than the local pubs and fast food places.

[Meerkat]

I might be wrong but I scanned through the document last night and thought that £21m had been put aside for the stadium development alone and as Dave said the Council's involvement means that we're pretty much ring fenced.

Where did it say that in the linked doc? I only saw a £10m budget for the stadium itself (in the spec at the end as the “development budget”)
There is a £23m odd number that is the council’s spending on land acquisition plus value of land they already hold, but that is for all the land.
The whole scheme is titled as “Woking Football Club and associated development”. Is that causing confusion, possibly deliberately!
IMO the failure in the ring fencing is that the Council own the stadium and the club, so if they are struggling to get their £250m back they would have the power to vary the agreement and cut back on the expensive bit that won’t bring them a return.
I couldn’t find any kind of guarantee of when the stadium would be ready - clubs die when they move out and then the new ground doesn’t get built quickly

[Reading Card]

Apparently the prices at Tottenham are aimed at being the same/lower than the local pubs and fast food places.

They are ! Bevertown neck oil ( which is a nice pale ale) is £5.50 which is cheaper than even around here for the same beer. The food seems reasonable quality too ( big home made market style sausage rolls £3.50). Compared to even Wembley/ Arsenal/ WestHam its miles better.

I am a turn up at 3 pm/ KO kind of guy but next time I go to spurs I'll be getting there as early as I can.

It's encouraging that Spencer from Dukelease is tuned in to this already but I would advise that anyone who is involved with this planning and building process of ours to go and check it out.

clubs die when they move out and then the new ground doesn’t get built quick

On a different note is there any more mention of the length of time we would need to be at Farnborough !? Will they start the build of the ground before they finish the dwellings ?

[GU21 Card]

https://www.woking.gov.uk/wfcstadiumdevplan

Not sure if posted before but here it all seems to be.

[Meerkat]

We had been told in the past that only X% of the dwellings could be sold before the stadium opens, to give the developer an incentive to get it done, but I couldn’t see that in the documents.

[KRE_Matt]

Here's a GetSurrey article for anyone interested -

https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey ... 339008.amp

[Reading Card]

Interesting stuff

Capacity now 9,026

Woking FC is in an average annual deficit of £200,000 and only fared slightly better financially in 2018 due to a good FA Cup run, where the club came up against Premier League side Watford.

Only slightly better ?

Surely we were profitable

The number of floors have been reduced in certain areas so that proportion of land covered by the 10-storey blocks is lower, now accounting for only 4% of the development.

Mr Walker explained: “The 10-storey elements are designed not to be on the edge of the street next to people’s homes, but in the centre of the development next to the football ground.

"The houses by our big stand are 10 metres away from six storeys now, but that will be 75 metres afterwards.”

Its a reasonable argument for the 10 story's

Having listened to residents' concerns, the development will have a medical centre accommodating 14,400 patients too

be careful what you wish for , now you have the footfall of all those patients all year round :)

[Chobham Card]

Woking FC is in an average annual deficit of £200,000 and only fared slightly better financially in 2018 due to a good FA Cup run, where the club came up against Premier League side Watford.

Only slightly better ?

Surely we were profitable

Didn't fag packet maths suggest that we made somewhere between £140,000-£200,000 depending on how TV money was split? Wouldn't have surprised me for us to have still fallen a bit short.

[skippy]

On the P&L sheet we made a profit of about £200k iirc.

I meant to mention it on here when I got the accounts, but frankly I'm still sitting down trying to take in 'made a profit' in relation to WFC's accounts.

I notice for sympathy sakes though that the P&L deficit of £200k of previous years is being used without noting that a chunk of that deficit is covered by shareholder payments (either for new shares or capital contributions) which don't appear in the P&L sheet.

[Lurker]

Only slightly better ?

Surely we were profitable

Didn't fag packet maths suggest that we made somewhere between £140,000-£200,000 depending on how TV money was split? Wouldn't have surprised me for us to have still fallen a bit short.

We made £300k from prize/TV money alone, and there'd be various incidentals - including gate money from hosting a Premier League club - to be added to that. If we'd "still fallen a bit short", then we truly are a basket-case.

[Meerkat]

Financially supported by developers whilst groundsharing......can they really get it built in 12 months?

[doylie]

At the Trust meeting it was mentioned that the Club will vacate for two seasons, another interesting point was that the Club will get a 250 year lease with a peppercorn rent from WBC.

[DavetheBountyHunter]

Financially supported by developers whilst groundsharing......can they really get it built in 12 months?

Won’t need it when we get the Harry Arter money!

[skippy]

Well I know agreements for lease can be a bit wooly on detail but if one of my clients was signing up based on that 'specification' for the stadium I'd be warning them they need a lot more detail or they'll be relying on contractor's proposals with virtually nothing to refer back to.

Our stadium specification doesn't seem to include or only mentions in passing; building tolerances, structural requirements, usable area (as opposed to gross internal area), external finishes, internal finishes, fire strategy and life safety systems, acoustic requirements, room conditions (temperature, ventilation, lighting), ancillary services (power, security, IT, AV), transportation systems (lifts) and probably a few things I've forgotten.

You might not expect that all in one document but you'd at least expect reference to supplementary documents or at a minimum relevant standards.
I know the club aren't paying but it seems to me that we're relying on the developer's expertise to do this. No offence to Dukelease but it's always better if the end occupier/tenant provides the brief.

[trevorinottawa]

Is there a good quality PDF of the stadium plans available anywhere? There's a poor quality pdf of a photocopy on the Woking Council website.

[Meerkat]

Skippy - the Preamble to that stadium spec states that it is to aid the architects in their initial design process.
I would hope the stadium plan produced in the main agreement is what they could be held to.
There was something in the main doc referring to design and build standards, but I can’t search it to find whether that was just for the residential or everything.
Bit concerning that the “WFC Condition” schedule has the clause that it is imperative that the developer makes a 20% profit; and parties will work together to secure value for money and procure a new stadium (note the order those two come in!)