Cardiff City reaches stadium share agreement

Welsh Cardiff City has hammered out an agreement with the Blues rugby club for sharing their new stadium.

The sides had been negotiating for months, but Cardiff City chairman Peter Risdale said an agreement has been reached. The new stadium is owned by the football club, and the rugby team would be renting.

"The situation with the Cardiff Blues is that we have reached a broad agreement on what are called heads of terms, on the basis under which they would share our stadium – and I will stress it is our stadium," Ridsdale said. "I believe that will be turned into a full agreement in the very near future.

"I think it's something every Cardiff City fan should welcome because obviously it gives an income stream regularly."

Blues chief executive Bob Norster said many details must be finalised over the proposed ground-share scheme.

An athletics track is about to be laid at a site across the road from the new development, housing Cardiff Amateur Athletics Club. After that, demolition on the old site can start, and building can commence on the new stadium.

The site will include seating for 25,000 and accommodations up to 30,000. Planning has been set to increase capacity to 60,000 should the need arise.

At least 400,000 square feet of retail space will be at the site, with a series of stores.

Original estimates placed stadium cost at GBP 38 million, though Cardiff City pushed in an extra GBP 5 million recently. Ridsdale claimed the GBP 38 million was not the actual cost, but just the money the club had at the time.

"We couldn't build the stadium as it was designed for £38m, therefore we have had to put an extra GBP 5 million into the account with the council to guarantee delivery of the stadium," Risdale said. "The costs haven't risen, what's risen is the amount of money we've had to provide to pay for the stadium.

Source: euFootball.BIZ © Copyright 2006 - All rights reserved.