Council plea for community stadium information (From York Press)

Council plea for community stadium information

9:19am Tuesday 17th January 2012 in Community stadium news

A DECISION on proposals for a community stadium and a huge retail complex on the edge of York will not be made until at least next month.

Plans by Oakgate (Monks Cross) Ltd for new John Lewis and Marks & Spencer stores and a 6,000-seater home for York City FC and York City Knights were originally expected to go before City of York Council’s planning committee at its January meeting, which will be held on Thursday.

But the council has asked Oakgate for more information on some aspects of the scheme, including its potential retail impact on city-centre businesses, meaning a decision will now be made at a later date.

Mike Slater, the council’s assistant director of planning and sustainable development, said: “The scale and complexity of applications such as this inevitably raise a number of issues which need to be considered and resolved before the application is presented to committee, and additional information is being sought and provided by the applicant as part of the normal planning process.

This process includes assessment and consideration of the retail impact on the city centre. As in many cases, the planning committee meeting for which the application was originally scheduled has changed to allow discussions with the applicant to continue.”

Oakgate has said the scheme will boost York’s economy by £12 million a year and create 1,000 new jobs, but city-centre traders claim it would wreck their businesses.