Yesterday's planning consent for the next stage of the Abbey Stadium redevelopment will set in motion a string of actions for the Club, as Chairman Gary Harwood (pictured) explains.

"The first work stream is to produce an invitation to tender that will go out to potential contractors," he told cambridgeunited.com.  "I don't know how long that will take; clearly we've already got all the drawings and specifications of materials, but there will need to be a formal Invitation To Tender (ITT) document.  My guess is that it will probably be a few weeks to finalise that.

"It then has to go out to potential tenderers.  We have a list of potential tenderers from when we went through this exercise for the South Stand, and we have also been contacted by others since then that would like to be included in this project.

"We'll probably have to give potential tenderers something like four weeks to respond from the point the ITT goes out.  There will then be a detailed evaluation of the responses by our professional advisers such as Quantity Surveyors to make sure that we understand what has been quoted for, and to make sure that there have been no omissions or that we're not going to be caught on extras etc.

"That evaluation is probably another two to three weeks once the tender responses are in.  We will then shortlist or go to a final contractor: and the decision on whether it's shortlist or final contractor will obviously depend on the volume and quality of responses that we get and how close - or not - the bid prices are from the various contractors.

"If we have a shortlist of more than one and then go into negotiation with two or three tenderers; that negotiation period, to get to a final one, would probably add another two to four weeks.  Having got to a final one, it will probably take a further four weeks to get to a final contract with that particular tenderer."

A second work stream relates to securing the grants that are available from the Football Foundation.

"When we originally applied for our redevelopment grant from the Football Foundation, we were going to do the South end and the North end both at the same time," Harwood explained, "and indeed we got grant approval for £2million of grant funding for that redevelopment, plus an interest free loan from the Football League.

"Of course we only developed at the South end and we only used roughly half of that grant.  So, in theory, there is £1million of grant fund still available for the Newmarket Road end redevelopment.

"When we went to the Football Foundation at the point we realised that the original Newmarket Road end scheme was not going to be viable - and therefore we were effectively only going to do the South end from that original application, and then do the Newmarket Road end later on - the Football Foundation confirmed that the £1million grant outstanding could be transferred to the new scheme.  They indicated that the best way to do that would be to resubmit our application, because it could well be - and this was by no means a promise, but it was a little hint - that if we reapplied there may be slightly more than £1million available.

"So we have to effectively put in a completely new application to the Football Foundation.  That, again, we can begin to do now, and we can do it based on our estimate of the contractor's cost, but we probably won't be able to finalise the application until we've been through the tendering process."

A third work stream relates to obtaining the remaining finance for the project, and Harwood confirmed that this process had already begun.

"We began our finance work way back when we were looking at repaying the Sterling loan last year," he said. "We went out to potential financiers for a number of things: 1 - to help us to repay Sterling, 2 - to effectively refinance our current banking facilities, and 3 - to potentially provide the financing for the Newmarket Road end and Main Stand redevelopment.

"We have almost a firm offer of finance from one particular lender, but what we now need to do is competitively look at our requirements for funding for this particular project, to make sure we've got the best possible financial deal.  That will start in about three to four weeks time and it is about a four to six week process.  So funding should be nailed - subject to a Football Foundation grant - well before we appoint a contractor.

"That's pre-supposing that when we finally get to a contractor price, the real price for the project is not significantly at variance to the estimate that we had originally come up with.

"The original estimate was in the order of £5-£5.5million.  What we already know is that, as a result of the planning consent that was given on Wednesday, there are additional costs such as the section 106 costs for highways, for community, for arts etc - and that puts an unexpected cost of roughly £350,000 on top of whatever the contract cost is going to be.

"So we need to keep our fingers crossed and hope that our contractor cost comes in very close to if not on the original estimates, if the whole scheme is going to be viable."

Although delighted to receive planning consent, Harwood stated that another work stream would focus on further discussions with the Council.

"A fourth stream, as a result of what happened in the last couple of weeks, will be for some significant negotiations with Cambridge City Council," he confirmed.  "Those negotiations will centre on some of the specific conditions they have put on to the planning consent.

"We will discuss highways again, but I suspect that we won't be able to negotiate much, if anything, off the £281,000 highways cost.  But I do hope that we will be able to negotiate the £40,000 community cost that they have put on to the 106, given the work that we already do in the community; and there will be a lot of discussions going on to demonstrate what we already do in the community and how we plan to enhance our community activities as we go forward.

"With regard to the arts contribution, which is also a section 106 condition, what I'd hope to do is incorporate into the redevelopment somehow some 'work of art' that perhaps is in some way linked to either the Abbey Ward, the Abbey Stadium or Cambridge United Football Club - something that has some relevance to the project that we're talking about.

"I do know that we have a number of artists amongst our supporters and maybe one, or a number, of those artists can some up with some innovative ideas that the Council would accept as an alternative to what they're proposing in the 106."

The fifth and final work stream relates to the commercial areas of the redevelopment.

"The final piece of the jigsaw is then to confirm all of the pre-lets," he confirmed, "and in an ideal world we'd like to get all of that done before we award the build contract as well.  We've had a number of very serious discussions with hotel operators, crèche operators, leisure club operators so, again, we don't see this as a lengthy and complicated process as, now we have planning consent, we know the exact size and shape of each of those commercial facilities.

"Linked with that, the one complication in this work stream is this 'open-ended' commercial space that we've got on the second floor of the building behind the Newmarket Road end stand.  That was originally going to be 14 apartments, and to get this project through the planners we eventually had to withdraw the apartments from the scheme and use that space for what we've effectively identified as 'general commercial space'.

"It is fair to say that calling it 'general commercial space' has probably put unwarranted fears in the minds of Council Officers and Council members.  Maybe it's those fears that have caused the added conditions that came out of the Planning Committee on Wednesday.  Those conditions were 1 - to cease operating of our hospitality facilities at 11pm, and 2- the Council reserves the right to approve or not the exact use of that 'general commercial space'.

"The complicated, and perhaps more time-consuming piece of that work stream is now to nail precisely what we're going to use that commercial space for, and then to talk to the Council and make sure they're happy with it and, as a result, remove those fears that they had on Wednesday which, we hope in tern, might cause them to relax the 11pm cut off time which we are very disappointed about and will severely impact the commercial revenues that we'll get from the project."

Based on these work streams, Harwood is now able to indicate how and when the visible aspects of the redevelopment should unfold.

"There really is a whole load of parallel activities that need to start now or over the next few weeks," he said.  "If we look at a project plan for all of those streams, and dovetail them together, we're probably not going to get to the end of the 'pre-build' phase until October or November.  Assuming we do get there October/November then my hope would be that the contractors would be ready to start work round about the end of 2004.

"The first piece of the actual project would be to relocate the Supporters Club to the South end, and an ideal time to do that would be either just before or just after the Christmas period.

"Having relocated the Supporters Club, we then need to move the Club personnel into temporary offices, which will probably have to be portacabins somewhere on the Main Stand side of the ground.  That will happen at the time we relocate the Supporters Club, or shortly afterwards.

"Once we've got the Club's offices moved, we can start demolition of everything at the Newmarket Road end.  That demolition process would start very early into 2005, meaning the Newmarket Road end terrace would close at the same time.

"If all of that does start early in 2005 then, subject to what we see when we get the tender responses back, our estimate is that we would be aiming for completion by Christmas 2005, and reopening the Newmarket Road end as a seated stand in January 2006."

Once the Newmarket Road end is demolished, supporters from this section of the ground will need to be relocated, and Harwood explained how this will work.

"When the Newmarket Road end terrace closes, our supporters on match days on the Newmarket Road end would then either be accommodated in the Habbin terrace or in the South Stand," he confirmed.  "We wouldn't charge a premium for the South Stand, so effectively at that point the South Stand would become a home stand and entrance to it would be by Newmarket Road end season ticket holders, or by pay on the day - but pay on the day would be terrace prices, so our supporters weren't penalised as a result of the redevelopment project.

"I'm not precisely sure yet, but I suspect that the Habbin terrace, at that point, would have to be south Habbin for home fans and north Habbin for away fans, so our Habbin season ticket holders would then have to move from north to south Habbin terrace and those Newmarket Road end fans that wanted to stay in the terrace, rather than move into seats, would also go into the South Habbin.

"If we have a good season next year, at the point that we start this redevelopment I suspect that terrace space will become at a premium and therefore I would urge people that genuinely want to use a terrace throughout the current season to make sure they get their Habbin or Newmarket Road end season ticket fast because we may well only have space in the south Habbin terrace for home terrace season ticket holders once we start the redevelopment."

The planning consent doesn't just relate to the Newmarket Road end; there are implications for the Main Stand too.  However, Harwood confirmed that discussions still needed to take place regarding the timing of this.

"What we're not sure yet is whether we can do the Main Stand in parallel with the Newmarket Road end," he admitted.  "That will largely depend on the contractors' view of whether that is practical and also the Police and the Safety Advisory Group's view as to whether we can keep the right safety standards up on match days if we were doing both sides of the ground at the same time.

"In an ideal world I'd like to do the Main Stand in parallel with the Newmarket Road end, but it may have to be done sequentially.  If it has to be done sequentially then once we reopen the Newmarket Road end in January 2006 we would start on the Main Stand, and my guess would be that we would get it completed ready for the start of the 2006/07 season."

Harwood has often stated that the redevelopment is crucial to the Club's future.  "Planning consent unlocks the ability to fix the refinancing," he said, "and it potentially allows those people that we've been talking to about investment in the Club to now come forward and complete that investment.

"So getting consent is a major milestone, and it's something that we should be very pleased about, despite some of the conditions and some of the hurdles that we've still got to jump."

[Abbey Plans Get Green Light]

Previous recent features:
End of Term Report 2003/04
Randall Butt - The End of an Era
Gary Harwood's New Year Statement
'Bridge The Gap' - The Background
Abbey Stadium Plans Unveiled

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Thursday 3rd June 2004