Cod Almighty | Diary
Into the great wide open
18 November 2015
Wicklow Diary writes: Damn Paul Hurst and his gritty team of midweek news-less winners. We're forced to look to the boardroom, balance sheets and council offices for all the action this week. Rock and roll. Let's try and make it exciting.
Pow! The National League has signed a CEO from the Football League. The announcement to herald this appointment refers frequently to something called the 'Competition' and has the jumbled language that goes down a treat at this level.
Biff! The council is ready to present its Sequential Site Survey of 16 possible stadium locations.
Ironic zlonk! Forest Green Rovers are burning cash at such a rate that it could contribute to global warming. Their efforts are still non-League compared to the debt that Bolton are in though. When you get to be, say, let's pick a crazy, sky-high figure of £25million in debt, isn't it time to tighten the belt? How is it allowed to get to £170million?
I'll pick through the sugar daddy finances of FGR and Bolton another day. I need to recover from yesterday's reading material first. Planning and legal literature is bad enough – when combined with management consultancy, the result can become unreadable. Two professions that I regard as enemies of language and prose, with a habit of making simple concepts sound complicated. Accordingly, I doff my cap to anyone willing to wade through every word of the eighty-nine pages in the Grimsby Town Football Club Sequential Site Survey.
What can we glean from this document created for the council by SLR, a company that has evolved beyond the use of words in its name to go by the full title of SLR Consulting Ltd?
For all the dancing around with scoring different criteria, it's size that matters. SLR considered 16 sites – eight from the club's assessment in October 2014 and an additional eight across the borough. They shortlisted four sites to be considered for detailed assessment on the grounds of availability (can we buy it?) and viability (can we afford it?). Europarc, Peaks Parkway, Morrisons and Great Coates (or to give its full title, 'Great Coates? You're Effing Kidding Me Right?').
The top-ranked site in the survey was actually Garth Lane, which already comes with the appealing stadium name of Dockside. However, the site was discounted by SLR for being too small. This is the type of move that my dad used to refer to as "a bit Irish" until my Irish mum glared it out of him. To restore some sanity, the council has added Garth Lane to the shortlist, along with wildcard Freeman Street. Freemo scored poorly in the survey but has "regeneration possibility".
Why include the smaller sites in the survey if we were not going to consider a development scenario that could be viable for them? Is the club just presenting the question in such a way as to get the answer it wants?
On a positive note, the survey seems to present a picture of a council that is trying to work with the club to finally deliver on the stadium project. But what is the point of this charade? It seems we are bound by the constraints of needing enough land to cater for the two development scenarios outlined by the club. Both these involve a gazillion square feet of shopping and a small town of residential units. Why include the smaller sites in the survey if we were not going to consider a development scenario that could be viable for them? Is the club just presenting the question in such a way as to get the answer it wants?
The club's own 'Sequential Appraisal', carried out in October 2014, is included as an appendix to the SLR survey. It is brief and to the point – PP good, all else bad. Interestingly, it used three scoring categories which SLR regarded as the same thing: "site access", "car access" and "road network". If the main thing your site has going for it is a big field next to a road it is going to score well against say, a town centre location. Another error in the club's ranking was the scoring of three sites, including Blundell Park, giving them negative ranking for site development when a neutral score was more appropriate.
I am drawn to a section from a three-year-old original/regular Diary on matters of the stadium:
"If Town are going to move to a new stadium, they'll only get one shot at it. It's taken 20 years and the plans are still yet to progress beyond the drawing board. So if mistakes are made, there'll be no second chances. Everything rides on every decision being made correctly, and made correctly first time. Get it right and it could lift the Mariners two divisions, perhaps giving a much-needed economic boost to North East Lincolnshire along the way. Get it wrong and it could kill the club."
Where is the development scenario where we get regeneration grants for the Blundell Park, Garth Lane or Freemo sites, combined with government/FSIF grants and 10-year debentures from sad saps like me who would divert the two gym subscriptions that they don't use and not even look for a brick with a name on it in return? The club may deem these scenarios unfeasible. Perhaps they are. However, until I see some actual evidence to support this – and comparisons of revenue streams with Peaks Parkway – they won't have my support.
A lot of online debate on the possible location – and indeed a section of the scoring in the SLR survey – relates to traffic congestion. There's a view that we must have a giant car park and we must have good road access and we must avoid congestion. I've got news: every event where thousands of people congregate and leave at the same time has congestion. I find it surprising that none of the sites include park and ride as a solution to offset potentially the devil's congestion.
Ironically, making do with off-street parking as at BP, while obviously not ideal for residents, may work better than two thousand cars fighting for the car park exits. Even the 85th-minute shitlarks aren't going to help that disperse. In fact a giant car park would probably up the ante with larks leaving earlier and earlier in a bid to nose out onto Peaks Parkway first. I parked on Lovett Street last week. Even with the delay of some joyful, Mackreth-inspired full-time whistle hugs, I was clear of the town ten minutes later.
Yesterday, as we were contemplating our latest piece of paralysis by analysis, another upstart club announced real progress in its stadium plans.
Console yourself as I did last night – read the Jack Waterman chapter in the We Are Town book. Let your mind wander and imagine the heroes stride across the very turf we take for granted every two weeks. Remember that as we dither on the new stadium, Blundell Park is still the best place in the world to watch a game of football.