Bodfish: Why stadium plan needs a rethink

THE time has come for a radical rethink and reassessment of where we are with the community stadium.

We are at an apparent impasse with, on the one hand a clear necessity to have a home for the Albion and a community stadium for the new city and on the other, the problem of the preferred site at Falmer.

We have to be realistic about the reasons for the University of Brighton not supporting Village Way North.

Its prime concern must be to protect its interests in having room for growth.

A stadium, while having some connections with the university in terms of supporting, for example, sports, medicine etc, will not really be at the heart of what it wants to do as an academic body.

There is also the fundamental difficulty with the Falmer site and that is the lack of land for the necessary support and development to make a stadium financially viable.

This means that any stadium at Falmer, be it in Village Way North or at the new proposed site of Village Way South, is financially difficult to say the least.

We have now to re-evaluate the possibilities within the city.

We have to reconsider whether there are other possibilities which not only meet the needs of the Albion but the city as a whole. These needs are multiple but can be boiled down to a couple of key points.

First is the necessity of land for supporting development and to meet other needs of the city.

Second we now have to come to terms and confront the issue of traffic in the city centre.

Local businesses and others are putting on enormous pressure for a park-and-ride site and, while there are legitimate differences about whether this should be a large, single site or a number of smaller sites, the issues will not go away.

If there is to be a park-and-ride then there is no doubt that it has to be at the gateway to the city.

A gateway which has the potential not only to meet the needs of car-bound visitors but also to link into the rail network.

The question with regards to the community stadium then becomes a much broader one and we have to consider whether other needs can be reconciled with the imperative of also recognising the integrity of the Downs.

Before proposing a solution we do, of course, need to consider the issue of the Downs.

I have no doubt that the beauty of the Downs and their conservation are integral to the nature of our city.

Our uniqueness has as much to do with the fact that we are an urban area sandwiched between the sea and the Downs.

Yet if we are to set in stone the boundaries of the South Downs we run the risk of stifling the prosperity of our city.

We are in danger of becoming a sterile community which loses its vitality and declines economically to become a commuter dormitory to London.

The time has now come to be realistic and pragmatic enough to open up our thinking and to consider whether there are other sites which have the potential to meet all our needs.

There are three possibilities.

Shoreham Harbour is one of the largest brownfield regeneration sites in the South East of England. There is development beginning to happen but adequate access to the harbour by both road and rail is impossible at the moment.

While there has been talk of a road tunnel, this could cost something in the order of £50 million and would take a decade to construct even if the will and cash were there.

Braypool is another possibility but the site is constrained and rail links are not possible.

The only site within the city which has the potential to meet all our needs is Waterhall.

Waterhall was historically a landfill site and is currently in use for sports facilities.

It is a valley below the escarpment of the Downs and, above all, is capable of being linked to both the road and rail networks.

It is a site which would easily accommodate not only a community stadium but also supporting development and could be an element in a park-and-ride system.

I know there will be considerable objections to this proposal but are these objections, at the end of the day, any different to those objections to Falmer? We are going to have to face up to the need for a site.

It cannot be a city centre site because there is not one available. The station site is a non-runner, the site owners are not willing to co-operate in the community stadium proposal and no one has the resources to purchase a site and put in the necessary money. If the city council is to contribute to the building of a community stadium, and we must, we can only contribute what we have. Put simply, all that we have is land.

Therefore we have to look to land owned by the city and land which has the capacity to meet the immediate needs of the Albion and longer-term needs of the city and its people. Serious and urgent thought has to be given to take account, within the Local Plan, of the possibility of other sites and specifically Waterhall.

I believe we can have a stadium. We can have a stadium in the near future. But we will have to take some difficult and brave decisions. Waterhall has to be on the agenda again and has to be given really serious consideration.