Etihad Campus, Stadium and Collar Site Development Thread

Prestwich_Blue said:
I'm not aware there is an option (but that doesn't mean there isn't one). However I recall that soon after the takeover, they looked at buying it as part of building an entirely new stadium, either on what's now the North car park, or the CFA. My understanding is that it didn't come to fruition because of legal issues around the Etihad covenants.
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I believe that after the 2002 games the stadium was pledged to the City Council with Sports England retaining ownership for 25 years after which the stadium was gifted to the Council. If that's the case then after 2028 if we buy the stadium all the proceed go to the council.
 
Has anyone got the proposed massing plan for the Collar site?

I think Lexstar posted it originally.

I think it was from the North stand expansion planning application.

Thanks.
 
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BMR said:
I remember reading a story about Manchester started building an underground system from Victoria to Piccadilly I think in the 60s, I wonder if that still exists might be what they build on.
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spiny said:
It was about linking trains between Victoria and Piccadilly stations through an underground line. I don't think it went beyond being a proposal with plans and never started.
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it was stopped after initally starting on it.

Theres a loco buried underneath the Arndale
 
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Prestwich_Blue said:
I'm not aware there is an option (but that doesn't mean there isn't one). However I recall that soon after the takeover, they looked at buying it as part of building an entirely new stadium, either on what's now the North car park, or the CFA. My understanding is that it didn't come to fruition because of legal issues around the Etihad covenants.
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I attended a meeting of the Westminster branch of the OSC in January 2003 at Portcullis House, just next to the Houses of Parliament. David Bernstein was the guest, around six weeks before he quit as chairman, and he addressed an audience of maybe fifty or sixty Blues for the best part of three hours.

The forthcoming move to CoMS, as it was then known, was one of the major topics of the evening and he dwelled on it at length. He expressly stated that City's lease for the stadium gives the club an option to purchase the freehold at a price against which the rent paid up to that point will be set off.

He expressed the view that it was unlikely to be viable to exercise the option for 20 or 30 years after the club first occupied the stadium. Of course, ADUG's takeover rather changed that landscape. However, as has been stated by a number of sources, ADUG won't take the freehold as the purchase price in this event would be payable to Sport England.

Finally, and this is from an impeccable source whose reliability no one on here would question for even a second*, the idea of building a brand new stadium was developed in some detail, with the North Car Park selected as the site. The sticking point was that City wanted to demolish the current stadium when the new one was built.

That would have required Sport England's consent, and they wouldn't give it. Efforts were made to see if a sub-tenant could be found, perhaps Sale RU, the RFL, or even UK Athletics if we could remove the bottom tier of seats and squeeze a track back in. For whatever reasons, none of those were really viable, and in any case City weren't keen as having two large stadia on site would have inhibited other plans for the wider campus.

* - People can believe this or not, but it's true. For 3 or 4 years after the takeover, I used to receive information from two excellent sources about the development of the stadium and the environs. One had connections right at the top of the club and one was an external professional adviser. Both eventually moved on to further their careers and my information dried up.
 
petrusha said:
I attended a meeting of the Westminster branch of the OSC in January 2003 at Portcullis House, just next to the Houses of Parliament. David Bernstein was the guest, around six weeks before he quit as chairman, and he addressed an audience of maybe fifty or sixty Blues for the best part of three hours.

The forthcoming move to CoMS, as it was then known, was one of the major topics of the evening and he dwelled on it at length. He expressly stated that City's lease for the stadium gives the club an option to purchase the freehold at a price against which the rent paid up to that point will be set off.

He expressed the view that it was unlikely to be viable to exercise the option for 20 or 30 years after the club first occupied the stadium. Of course, ADUG's takeover rather changed that landscape. However, as has been stated by a number of sources, ADUG won't take the freehold as the purchase price in this event would be payable to Sport England.

Finally, and this is from an impeccable source whose reliability no one on here would question for even a second*, the idea of building a brand new stadium was developed in some detail, with the North Car Park selected as the site. The sticking point was that City wanted to demolish the current stadium when the new one was built.

That would have required Sport England's consent, and they wouldn't give it. Efforts were made to see if a sub-tenant could be found, perhaps Sale RU, the RFL, or even UK Athletics if we could remove the bottom tier of seats and squeeze a track back in. For whatever reasons, none of those were really viable, and in any case City weren't keen as having two large stadia on site would have inhibited other plans for the wider campus.

* - People can believe this or not, but it's true. For 3 or 4 years after the takeover, I used to receive information from two excellent sources about the development of the stadium and the environs. One had connections right at the top of the club and one was an external professional adviser. Both eventually moved on to further their careers and my information dried up.
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Thanks Peter. I can 100% support your claim about the development of a new stadium, and I've posted about this before. The North Car Park was definitely one of the proposed sites (with up to 85k seats iirc) but there was also a proposal to build a mega-stadium (100k capacity) on the site of what's now the CFA.

I was told that the owner didn't think the Etihad, which was just 5 years old at the time of the takeover, was of sufficient quality. David Bernstein has said (and he said it when Dave & me interviewed him for KOTK) that the Etihad was a crucial factor in the ADUG takeover. I told him it wasn't but I don't think he believed me. But it's true that ADUG saw the Etihad as disposable.

I was told that when the architect they engaged to do the proofs of concept asked about the budget, he was told that the budget for the bigger stadium was whatever was needed to make people's jaws drop open when they saw it!
 
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Prestwich_Blue said:
Thanks Peter. I can 100% support your claim about the development of a new stadium, and I've posted about this before. The North Car Park was definitely one of the proposed sites (with up to 85k seats iirc) but there was also a proposal to build a mega-stadium (100k capacity) on the site of what's now the CFA.

I was told that the owner didn't think the Etihad, which was just 5 years old at the time of the takeover, was of sufficient quality. David Bernstein has said (and he said it when Dave & me interviewed him for KOTK) that the Etihad was a crucial factor in the ADUG takeover. I told him it wasn't but I don't think he believed me. But it's true that ADUG saw the Etihad as disposable.

I was told that when the architect they engaged to do the proofs of concept asked about the budget, he was told that the budget for the bigger stadium was whatever was needed to make people's jaws drop open when they saw it!
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I think you're right about the stadium. If ADUG had decided, for example, that Everton represented a better long-term bet for their investment, I doubt that Mansour would have been swayed by the fact that City had a more or less new stadium at the time while Everton would have needed to build one as a matter of priority. As it was, City ticked more boxes than Everton even disregarding the issue of them needing a new ground.

The fact that there was land available for development around City's stadium, both within the framework of the club's requirements and outside it with the opportunity for nearby housing development, was definitely regarded as a plus. However, that was very much a bonus rather than a requirement of ADUG's for a deal to be done. They hadn't foreseen it when formulating their original intentions.

I know that money was no object in terms of the plans they were putting together in the early days. The original intention was to spend big on the collar site to attract partners and have a significant destination, as described in public documents from 2009 onwards, up and running a decade or more before now. Unfortunately, that was nixed by political changes in the UAE circa 2012, when it was decided that what might be regarded as vanity projects abroad weren't in the interests of Emiratis and overseas projects implemented using UAE funds should operate on a commercial basis.

Through the days of economic uncertainty caused by austerity, Brexit, Covid and war, no partner came forward with realistic proposals for a venture on land adjacent to the ground until Oak View advanced the idea for what would become Co-Op Live. Under the plans being advanced at the outset, where there'd have been significantly more largesse from ADUG and attracting major partners thus probably wouldn't have been much of a problem.

The political requirement from the UAE for this investment to be seen to offer value in commercial terms is also the reason that a lot of people find the architecture in ADUG projects rather underwhelming. They were at first prepared to contemplate building a new stadium at whatever cost it took to ensure that it was considered breathtaking. This consideration no longer applies to the developments we're now seeing.
 
petrusha said:
I think you're right about the stadium. If ADUG had decided, for example, that Everton represented a better long-term bet for their investment, I doubt that Mansour would have been swayed by the fact that City had a more or less new stadium at the time while Everton would have needed to build one as a matter of priority. As it was, City ticked more boxes than Everton even disregarding the issue of them needing a new ground.

The fact that there was land available for development around City's stadium, both within the framework of the club's requirements and outside it with the opportunity for nearby housing development, was definitely regarded as a plus. However, that was very much a bonus rather than a requirement of ADUG's for a deal to be done. They hadn't foreseen it when formulating their original intentions.

I know that money was no object in terms of the plans they were putting together in the early days. The original intention was to spend big on the collar site to attract partners and have a significant destination, as described in public documents from 2009 onwards, up and running a decade or more before now. Unfortunately, that was nixed by political changes in the UAE circa 2012, when it was decided that what might be regarded as vanity projects abroad weren't in the interests of Emiratis and overseas projects implemented using UAE funds should operate on a commercial basis.

Through the days of economic uncertainty caused by austerity, Brexit, Covid and war, no partner came forward with realistic proposals for a venture on land adjacent to the ground until Oak View advanced the idea for what would become Co-Op Live. Under the plans being advanced at the outset, where there'd have been significantly more largesse from ADUG and attracting major partners thus probably wouldn't have been much of a problem.

The political requirement from the UAE for this investment to be seen to offer value in commercial terms is also the reason that a lot of people find the architecture in ADUG projects rather underwhelming. They were at first prepared to contemplate building a new stadium at whatever cost it took to ensure that it was considered breathtaking. This consideration no longer applies to the developments we're now seeing.
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Petrusha.

PM sent.

Request. :-)
 
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Centurions said:
Is this what you're looking for?


Page 35.

View attachment 125347
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Thanks, but no.

It’s a coloured diagram of the Collar site showing flat massing buildings with numbers next to them, but with the descriptions of the buildings omitted. A basic vision of what the Collar site could look like without describing what the buildings are.
 
jrb said:
Posted by mcr guy on SSC - MCR

From the design and statement document.

He doesn’t state what the numbers relate to. Will need to find out.

Note the trees around the East stand. 3 trees that have recently been planted outside the East stand entrance.

3. A smaller indoor sports arena or an exhibition centre?

FBBF9096-7-BDD-40-EA-991-F-0-A5-E6906-A061.webp
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Is this what you are looking for jrb?
Page 1205 on the Campus,Stadium and Collar Site Thread
 
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