No need for a Vue change in Community Stadium project

The latest twist in a saga that would render back-to-back viewings of Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia palatable in comparison will become clear in the capital city.

A further delay to the scheme would be the consequence should Vue’s complaint be validated against rival company Cineworld’s plans to open a new IMAX complex in the city, as part of the stadium’s enabling development at Monk’s Cross.

On the back of constructor ISG’s withdrawal from the venture, that would serve as another significant blow in the interminable battle to provide much-needed, modern sporting facilities for the city’s professional clubs and residents.

It should not be used, however, as further leverage for political opponents in favour of shelving the proposal.

Vue Cinemas are just the latest in a self-interested line of dissenters, headed previously by the city-centre retailers, doing their best to scupper a project that is now the longest-running in football stadia history – even beating Brighton’s controversial relocation to an area of natural beauty.

In reality, though, this should have been one of the most straightforward.

After eight years of floundering for suitable sites from 2003, when former City chairman Douglas Craig’s demand for the club to pay him £2million to take back ownership of their Bootham Crescent home accelerated the need to move, the council struck lucky when £17million was handed to them by Vangarde to build a new structure in place of the run-down, council-owned Huntington Stadium – the rented base of the city’s rugby league team at a retail centre where, in return, new premises for John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Next and Cineworld would be built.

That plot turn certainly rescued hapless stadium project manager Tim Atkins, whose CV, on his appointment in 2008, carried one startling omission – he had never been involved in building a single sports arena.

Atkins duly spent the first year of his job visiting venues up and down the country to learn how to build a new stadium – at costs additional to his £50,000-a-year salary.

Giving the job to somebody with expertise in the field on a freelance consultancy basis – there are plenty around given the proliferation of clubs that have relocated over the past four decades – would, surely, have been a more sensible move.

Of that £17 million, which continues to gain interest in the council’s bank, approximately two-thirds would have been required to construct a stand-alone stadium of the size decided upon, according to estimates from the architects of Chesterfield’s attractive six-year-old Proact Stadium.

That is something worthy of considerable consideration when any prominent local councillor pontificates about propping up private enterprises in relation to the football club’s situation.

Rightly so, community benefits have been added to the project by the council that have seen the cost rise to £23million at the last estimate – a price that could increase if any of the five potential replacement constructors, believed to be interested in succeeding ISG, submit bids that are higher than their predecessors.

The athletics club have now been enjoying their new facilities for a year.

Improved NHS and library provisions will also be housed at the new stadium, while Yearsley Swimming Pool has been saved for future generations to enjoy.

In summary, it is the community element of the enterprise that could end up impacting on the oft-cited tax-payers of York.

But let’s get the scaremongering in perspective because surely the project would be worth the few extra pence a month, compared to the value from some other services that residents currently pay for.

Many would also argue that football clubs are an essential part of the community fabric in any English town or city and cannot be dismissed as private enterprises, especially in the case of the Minstermen, who are owned by a lifelong fan and local businessman in Jason McGill.

No Arab sheikh or Russian oil oligarchs are ever likely to take the helm at North Yorkshire’s only professional football club – a status that is being severely tested by the continued stadium delays.

Since offering financial assistance when the Supporters’ Trust rescued the club from closure 14 years ago, McGill has covered losses from 2006 when he took over ownership from the fans body.

Proposed 2011 and 2016 dates for relocation have since been and gone without a brick being laid, meaning McGill will, by the time the club moves to a new stadium, forego a considerable six, if not seven, figure sum, with the equity of Bootham Crescent’s sale now not sufficient to repay the £3million and rising that he has put in to keep the club operating at their current home, while an opportunity to play at a projected break-even site has now been denied for six years and counting.

The homeless rugby club have been compensated in the meantime and there is an argument that the football team might have received similar assistance, given the costs incurred by the protracted move.

With the club at, arguably, the lowest ebb in its history, sat at the bottom of the National League, some might think it’s easier to turn its back on them.

But surely that presents a more compelling argument to ensure the communal need is met to help preserve a club that beat both Manchester clubs in the 1990s, defeated Chelsea and Arsenal during the previous decade and famously knocked Tottenham out of the FA Cup on their way to a historic semi-final appearance in 1955.

In the not-distant past, York’s streets were also packed with proud residents who celebrated the club’s double-winning Wembley campaign of 2012, masterminded by current boss Gary Mills under the stewardship of McGill and toasted, within the walls of the Mansion House, by some of the councillors who now oppose the community stadium project.

There was a recent suggestion, meanwhile, that Bootham Crescent could be redeveloped as an alternative and the Monks Cross project shelved.

That was always going to pull on the heartstrings of City fans, but how could it ever be a realistic option?

New houses have now been built, on the understanding that the club was going to move, further hemming the stadium in and making the opportunities for expansion very limited.

There is land that might be purchased from the Ministry of Defence, but that would involve costs on top of those necessitated by the council buying Bootham Crescent and repaying the £2million Football Foundation loan that wouldn’t convert into a grant, under the unique agreement brokered by McGill to regain ownership of the ground more than a decade ago.

All those considerations come into play even before redevelopment costs are factored in, but perhaps the biggest obstacle that prohibits such a romantic notion is that, legally, the Vangarde money, which is subject to section 106 of European Procurement Law, cannot be used to build a venue away from the site where its enabling development exists.

If an ordinary citizen flaunted planning laws, their property would be pulled down, which would present the council with an interesting conversation in the head offices of John Lewis, Next and Marks & Spencer, who have all been trading successfully at Monks Cross, while the community of York still wait for a brick to be laid on the derelict site that formerly housed Huntington Stadium.

It is clearly too much to expect Vue, who boast 84 cinemas in the UK, to cede ground, or share its monopoly on multi-screen entertainment in York, with a major rival in the interest of improved communal sports facilities.

If their challenge is successful, though, it cannot be used as a convenient excuse to ditch plans that have shaped everything the football club has based its future on for more than a decade.

Planning restrictions are clearly more stringent than in 1932 when the football club made the decision to move from Fulfordgate at the end of one season and were playing in their current home by the start of the next campaign.

The community spirit that made that possible, including supporters lugging equipment by hand from one site to the other, proved that where there is a will, though, there is a way.

York’s councillors – and not just the ones that oppose the scheme, but the half-hearted supporters of it too – must ensure that’s the case eight decades on if the world’s greatest game is to continue having a representative in a city that has witnessed so many memorable sporting feats.