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.
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