Magnusson in talks over new site for West Ham stadium
10/08/2007 |
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Eggert Magnusson has revealed that West Ham United are in negotiations with the London Development Agency about building a new stadium for the 2011-12 season. The club's owner and chairman has identified a site opposite the West Ham underground station, which was used as a depot by Parcelforce and is largely brown-field.
The development follows Magnusson's failure to seal a move to the capital's Olympic stadium after the 2012 Games. Magnusson had offered £100m to the government and Olympic authorities for the stadium in east London, proposing a reduction in capacity from 80,000 to 60,000, with 20,000 retractable seats to allow the continued use of a permanent athletics track.
As the Olympic budget spirals upwards, it is unclear whether Magnusson's decision to make public his designs on the new site, owned by the LDA, is intended to inspire a rethink on the Olympic stadium, which will be cut to a 25,000 capacity after the Games.
"It will be interesting to see what Londoners think when they see our [new] ground and also the Olympic stadium [close by]," Magnusson said. "I don't understand why we are not able to go to the Olympic stadium. We offered money, we sent letters and we described how we saw things happening. We had a meeting at the House of Commons with [Olympics minister] Tessa Jowell and [Mayor of London] Ken Livingstone and it was not possible. As a businessman it makes no sense to me [to] build a new stadium and then take it down to 25,000."
(Source: Guardian.co.uk)
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