Gold Cup Sweepstake Kit in tomorrow’s Examiner PLUS 4-PAgE CHELTENHAm FESTIVAL PULL-OUT £13m move to extend stadium’s life to 2050
MANAGEMENT of the John Smith’s Stadium in Huddersfield is to be passed to a community trust.
It brings to an end the 28-year history of Kirklees Stadium Development Ltd (KSDL), which was set up in 1993 to manage the site for the benefit of both Huddersfield Town and Huddersfield Giants.
It also addresses the need to pump £9m into the site over the next decade to “extend the life” of the stadium to 2050.
Subject to the creation of a viable business plan Kirklees Council will provide a £13m loan to the trust.
Without “fundamental change” there are concerns that the stadium will no longer be viable.
The plan is to transfer commercial operations to one club, which will then agree a sub-lease or licence with the other.
Huddersfield Town is likely to take on full financial operational control along with the potential to develop a conferencing destination and potentially a new hotel
The move to a trust is designed to achieve a separation between the conflicted ownership and operation of the stadium, which is jointly owned by Kirklees Council and the sports clubs.
It means all three parties will place their shares - the council and Town each holding 40% with the Giants aka Huddersfield Sporting Pride at 20% - in trust on behalf of the community and setting the ownership of the stadium aside from any ownership of the clubs.
The freehold of the site is owned by the council. Changing how the stadium is managed is meant to ensure that:
It cannot become a source of reputational damage to the council or a financial burden to local taxpayers
It secures the long-term tenure of both clubs
The stadium is continuing in a better form and I think this is a
long-term solution
It delivers “complementary regeneration opportunities” for an enterprise corridor between the stadium and Huddersfield town centre. That may involve the council buying a site off Gasworks Street, which in the past has been linked to the £100m ski slope and leisure scheme planned by HD One.
The move to a trust comes as the impact of Covid on the stadium has become apparent.
Turnover, up to £4m in recent years, has been dented leading to loan payments to be deferred. Outstanding loans, some of which date back to the construction of the stadium, total “about £6m”.
Social distancing measures and limits on spectators access to live matches has also constrained KSDL’s commercial operations.
A report to the council’s decisionmaking Cabinet revealed that there was a deficit between KSDL’s income projections and expenditure, including loans, and that planned commercial development at the site had “stalled”.
However at the same time the council’s so-called Huddersfield Blueprint includes investment on a “corridor” between Huddersfield Station and the stadium.
The Gasworks Street site could help in the creation of that corridor.
In proposing the trust Deputy Council Leader Clr Peter McBride said it was a means of “stabilising and futureproofing” the stadium.
He said the authority had twice “reclaimed” the stadium when it threatened to go under and that those rescue missions “had cost the council a lot of money”.
He added: “But if we look at it as an investment over a long period of time it’s a very good investment which has kept for Kirklees a major centre for football which no other town in the country has got.
“That’s largely due to the council.” He also paid tribute to former council leader Sir John Harman for his courage in establishing the stadium in the mid 1990s.
He added: “[The stadium] is continuing in a better form and I think this is a long-term solution which will give to that company a stability that it undoubtedly needs.”
Clr Graham Turner said moving to a trust was “a really important step forward” in the future of the stadium and the two clubs.
“It’s right that we do this now. What we did 25 years ago was right then. Now is the time to do something different. It’s the right thing to do at the right time. We all know that there have been difficulties over the years - people not talking to each other and personality clashes - but this proposal should remove all that.”