Arsenal's new stadium

[Cunny]

http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/sto...1766173,00.html

 

Shadow of Arsenal's grand design hangs over the little people

 

Several social projects that were conditions of planning for the Emirates Stadium have failed to materialise

 

David Conn

Wednesday May 3, 2006

The Guardian

 

While Arsenal prepare to take a final bow at their legendary Highbury home after Saturday's match against Wigan Athletic, the club's startling new empire half a mile away, the Emirates Stadium, is an issue in tomorrow's local election. The latest worry in a catalogue of concerns to exercise residents and prompt a leaflet from Islington's opposition Labour Party is the decision - on security grounds - to allow 40 coaches to park in surrounding streets on match days rather than underneath the stadium, as was agreed in Arsenal's 2002 planning permission.

 

Arsène Wenger's team may be a Champions League final away from making the stadium move one of English football's greatest stories, but some residents have opposed Arsenal's plans since the club proposed buying and knocking down 29 homes adjoining Highbury's West Stand in 1997.

The anger over the coach parking follows the reversal of another key element of the travel plans: Holloway Road underground station, the closest to the new arena, will not now be improved, but will be "exit only" and closed to fans going home after matches.

 

Drayton Park, the overland train station next to the stadium, will not be used as agreed either; 60,000 fans will instead snake through residential streets to the stations further away, Highbury & Islington and Finsbury Park, which Transport for London will overhaul.

 

This uncomfortable news, extracted by Jennette Arnold, the Labour Greater London Assembly member, in a written answer from Transport for London, has added to other residents' complaints. Arsenal will not now be building a sports centre as agreed in the planning permission; Islington Council says the club will instead contribute £1m to - as yet undecided - local sports facilities.

 

There are also concerns over the number and type of affordable housing in the surrounding development, although both council and club say 40% of the 3,000 new homes will be affordable. While Arsenal and the club's supporters fix their eyes on the final against Barcelona on May 17 in Paris, and the spectacular future promised at the Emirates Stadium, some locals remain angry enough to bite the club's ankles. "As a football stadium, it is wonderful," said Arnold, "but many residents do feel very alienated by it and the Arsenal board have to understand that."

 

Although residents worry about the impact of a 60,000 crowd and fear chaotic travel arrangements, for some campaigners such details aggravate a deeper objection, that Arsenal, a commercial company, has been allowed to dominate a whole area. The club itself has been honest enough to admit that it only wanted a bigger stadium to make more money by absorbing a portion of the supporters straining on season-ticket waiting lists.

 

So controversial was the idea of building a massive new stadium on the grim Ashburton Grove rubbish recycling plant that the council extracted what it claims is a marvellous series of extras. The planning "gain", contained in what is known as a s106 planning agreement, included a state-of-the-art £60m new waste-recycling centre across Holloway Road and the 3,000 new homes. The club also agreed to pay £7.6m towards upgrading Holloway Road and Drayton Park stations among other transport improvements - money now saved following Transport for London's decision that it represents better value to rebuild the other two interchange stations.

 

"This is the highest proportion of s106 improvements compared to the size of development, in any scheme in the country," said Steve Hitchins, Islington Council's Liberal Democrat leader. "We could easily have lost Arsenal from the area, but instead the club is staying and we have secured amazing community benefits, revitalising the whole area."

 

The opponents - 16 residents groups, trade unions and other organisations in the Islington Stadium Community Alliance - pointed, however, to the only independent assessment of the scheme, by Rupert Grantham, the government's planning inspector.

 

Following a six-week public inquiry, he reported in 2003 that although the stadium design is "world class", and would have a "positive impact" on the area, the development would deliver "disappointingly low" community benefits. Grantham decided this was not regeneration, but "simply a redevelopment scheme" which favours Arsenal's "private interests".

 

Specifically, he said the expanded stadium would cause inconvenience to residents, lose vital green space, and the development would be socially divisive, because most of the affordable housing is being concentrated in one area, behind Holloway Road, with the new waste station in the middle of it. Even the flats designated for shared ownership will be affordable only to people earning £30-40,000 a year. The affordable housing planned for a redeveloped Highbury has also been moved and Arsenal's former home will be reserved for prestigious apartments.

 

Grantham recommended that compulsory purchase orders to buy out businesses in the Ashburton Grove industrial estate should not be granted because there was no "compelling public interest" to justify forcible relocation. The businesses and campaigners are still smarting at the decision by the deputy prime minister John Prescott to ignore his planning inspector and grant the CPOs anyway. The businesses have mostly accepted settlements and are leaving.

 

That battle for the heart of a neighbourhood is no longer theoretical. Go down there: the Emirates Stadium is almost finished, stunningly real. Vast, proud, dominant, its construction by Sir Robert McAlpine rapid and seemingly flawless compared to Multiplex's moneypit at Wembley.

 

For Arsenal, with £260m borrowed out of the club's £357m stadium development costs, the dance to the Champions League final is a fable it dared not dream. The club insists, too, that it is complying with all its wider responsibilities.

 

"The club is actively working with Islington Council and other bodies, including Transport for London to fulfil our compliance with s106 obligations," a spokesman said. "This has been a very successful process. In some cases the club has exceeded requirements, for example, providing affordable housing at 40%."

 

However, Alison Carmichael, who with her late partner, Robert Scott, spearheaded ISCA's campaign, strongly feels they were justified. "People are worried about massive disruption. We always understood that Arsenal are a business and they want the money, but the council has allowed this residential area to be completely dominated by the huge bulk of this stadium. A lot of people think it's rather gross to have Emirates, an advertising slogan, looming in massive letters all over us."

 

In the 1930s, while northern football clubs were scuffling about in a depression, Arsenal fashioned the grand aura of Highbury, the marble halls, the art deco stands, glowing with belief in the club's own stature. "Lucky Arsenal", managed by Herbert Chapman before his premature death in 1934, won five League championships and dominated the game. The Emirates Stadium, a bowl of expensive 60,000 seats, built on its own podium in the same patch of inner London, is a swaggering statement of Arsenal's modern confidence and, in a new era, a monument to football itself, its popularity, and commercial power.

 

Go Figures The cost of leaving Highbury

 

£800m

 

Estimated total cost of the Emirates Stadium and associated development

 

£260m

 

The amount Arsenal have borrowed from a consortium of banks led by the Royal Bank of Scotland

 

£60m

 

Cost to the club of building a new Lough Road waste recycling centre to replace the old one

 

£1m

 

Amount Arsenal are providing to local sports facilities following the decision not to build a club sports centre

 

£18.2m

 

Annual interest Arsenal will pay on their loans

 

£28.5m

 

Extra matchday income Arsenal expect to make next season

[StevieC]

They never had permission for the rail-link. Someone at the Council neglected to sign and send off that form.