Where do you get phobia of council involvement from.?? Of course there has to be involvement, the lease on the land ensures that in itself. Your quite correct that a stadium should be owned by a seperate limited company to offer protection and it would be folly not to do so, the fact that shareholders in that club will more than likely be the Kidd family for one absolutely links it to Swinton ownership,There is a due process to be completed, you benchmark to identify what approach to that process generally works best. So the true point is that I put it to you - evidence from other stadium development projects shows adopting a strategy of openness beats doing things as a closed shop.
Your statment that "Leigh had little input to that ground" has no basis in fact. There was extensive consultation, not just for design of the stadium but also the other neighbouring facilities at LSV. There wasn't even going to be a swimming pool initially, that changed when the people of Leigh had their say on the proposals. The driving force throughout was the Leigh Sports Partnership chaired by Trevor Barton, chairman of Leigh Miners ARLFC and current CEO of the Centurions, and the Partnership contained representatives from all the town's amateur sports clubs and education providers.
The stadium design was expressly done to meet Super League criteria and provide the Centurions with a facility that could support them in that end. The Leigh supporters were heavily consulted, that's why behind the posts at one end has a standing area - again that wasn't in the original design.
Funding of Leigh Sports Village had 3 main elements; aggregation, cross-subsidising development and lastly grants. The ownership is with LSV Co, not the Council. Yes, Wigan Borough Council had been proactively involved throughout, that is no bad thing. Much of the land involved was council owned and their involvement was absolutely necessary to ensure grant revenue was maximised, the route through the planning process was efficient and the final facilities were integrated into a proper strategy for future education, health and sports development purposes in the area as a whole.
You cannot achieve all that without working in partnership with people, and that is exactly what Trevor Barton facilitated every step of the way. He absolutely worked like a trojan at it, but what a great result and legacy.
You have previously made this claim that Swinton Lions will in some way own the stadium and upon challenge had to concede the statement was foundationless. So do you now have any fresh evidence to support this claim, since the last time it was discussed? If not, the default position has to be the one John Kidd gave at last year's meeting when in response to a direct question he stated the stadium would be owned by a Stadium Management company. As we have previously debated, this has an important advantage that the ground will not be an asset of the club, therefore should the club encounter financial strife the ground could not be sold to repay debts as happened with Station Road.
It is community assets that will be sold to pay for the ground. All the more reason why the community should have a say in what is done.
Why do you have this phobia about Council involvement? Without the Council being prepared to at least put some land into the pot there is no possible way a stadium can ever get built. Council involvement is inevitable. The key is to get the right sort of Council involvement! Has Wigan Borough Council's involvement at LSV been in any way negative?
The community assets that you refer to again involve a lease owned i suspect by the council and sub let to a sporting club, again quite rightly and i agree they should be involved .....remind me again hasn't the Chairmen already told us they are alonmg with a community junior football club. The fact that Swinton already has a baths it is unlikely the "community" will request any such facility.
I once said to you that all your posts smack of a willingness for this project to fail for whetever reason, the more you put the greater I am convinced this is the case.
Assuming the news on Thursday is positive and later on the project gets built what will your attitude be then Phil.?
Edited by marshy1, 20 September 2012 - 01:45 PM.
