Timeline is unveiled for work on community stadium (From York Press)

York community stadium timeline unveiled

10:50am Wednesday 16th January 2013 in News By Mark Stead, mark.stead@thepress.co.uk

PLANS showing how York’s new community stadium will look are set to be unveiled in November.

City of York Council has produced a timeline for how the project to build a 6,000-seater home for York City FC and York City Knights on the Huntington Stadium site at Monks Cross is scheduled to move forward during 2013, after proposals for the shopping complex which will fund it were approved last year.

The authority said final bids to design, build and operate the stadium will be received in August, with two bidders being shortlisted, and a contract will be awarded in October. A full planning application – including the stadium’s appearance – will be submitted the following month and the successful bidder will formally sign the contract early next year.

Meanwhile, City of York Athletics Club – which will move from its current Huntington Stadium base to a new track and facilities as part of the York Sport Village at the University of York – has said its new home is set to be ready by the end of this year.

Building work on the community stadium was originally due to begin towards the end of 2013 and be completed by November 2014, or the following March. But construction will now not start until June 2014, meaning the venue will be open for the start of the 2015/16 sporting season.

Coun Sonja Crisp, the council’s cabinet member for leisure, culture and tourism, said it was “a really exciting time” for the stadium project. She said: “Initial bids setting out the outline proposals of five bidders have been submitted to the council and we will have narrowed these down to two final bidders later in the year.

“We will then select a preferred bidder and award the contract.”

She said a community archaeological dig at the stadium site, in early 2014, would allow sports clubs, schools and other groups to get involved in the scheme and bring the history of the site together with its sporting future.

York City chairman Jason McGill said he hoped ideas for the stadium’s design could be radically different. He said: “We’re looking for something innovative, iconic, beneficial to the city of York culturally and historically, and somewhere everybody – not just football and rugby league fans – feels welcome.”

Neil Hunter, who chairs the athletics club, said he had been told the Sport Village facilities would be operating by the end of this year. He said: “This will allow us to introduce more people to athletics and open up avenues we do not have at the moment.”