According to the T&A (in the paper but not yet on website) there is a story by Ben Barnett about 174 homes being built on the old Northern View hospital site, which IIRC was going to form part of the village. The article refers to the OSV as being "stalled" and quotes council leader Greenwood as saying that funding for the Sports Village was being "evaluated in the light of the spending cuts".

Not sounding good at all.

One subject that is guaranteed to plunge me into a deep depression. Certainly looking forward to an update from the club at the next fans forum. Sadly I fear that we're no closer than this time last year to any diggers on site.

Sorry to break this to you, but it will never happen, never was, never will. Quote me on that. It was a big dream. That doesn't mean to say I don't want it to happen because anyone that has the slightest interested in UK sport will want it to happen.
It was laughable hearing about all the different organisations that we're each putting their share in the pot. I'm not trolling btw, from the moment I saw the plans on the news I thought 'Ha dream on, never happen' and hey here we are a couple of years down the line.
We are seeing the likes of Wakefield, Salford and Castleford bending backwards to get a basic but modern stadia in place for 2012 (2 will succeed), but yet Bradford, a club supposedly of much bigger stature having no plans to prevent themselves from having the worst stadium in SL. Its time to get back down to earth and go to plan B...if there is one?

You'll not be shocked to learn that most fans have had a healthy disregard to the more grandiose pronouncements from the various parties involved, RN. I don't think I'm giving away any great secrets if I say this has been on the cards from the start of the recession and, in its original plan as passed by the council, was never really looking like coming off anyway.

Not sure if it means 'back to square one', I feel the club do have irons in the fire (the directors must have known which way the wind was blowing) whether they are of sufficient quality to come up with serious ground improvements, I dunno. It's hardly the best time to be seeking finance. Hopefully we'll get a statement from Peter Hood as to just what his next move will be.

tbh it was always going to be virtually impossible to justify keeping the 15M the council had allocated to their portion of OSV ringfenced in face of council facing 60m worth of funding cuts. Writings been on wall ever since those cuts came through imo. But it was always planned that the stadium portion of OSV was to be funded by the club. This probably means that the plans will be scaled back significantly to a more realistic aim of putting a roof on pop side ( which lets face it is all we need in immediate future) with the rest of the ground being developed in stages later. Where we will find the funds to do that though is another matter.

Given that even if OSV doesnt go ahead the council will still have to provide alternate facilities to richard dunn which has been on its last legs for years. I wonder if we've considered possibilty of a new build stadium combined with a sports on the richard dunn land, which would presumably be a lot cheaper to build on as its relatively flat and doesnt have contamination problems odsal has. Added benefit being its close enough to our spiritual home that dont think many fans would have a problem accepting the move (which has always been problem with a permanent move to VP).

Which is something that has never bothered me too much. I'd be happy to move away from Odsal if we were moving to top class facilities and somewhere where the club would grow. The ideal situation would be redeveloping at our current home but I wouldn't shed too many tears if we were moving to something similar to what they have at Warrington.

I'd rather have a 21st century stadium. If we could get it built at Odsal then great, however if we have to move to get it then I'm happy for us to move.

Any chance we ever had of getting a new build stadium was destroyed when the previous scheme, basically funded by a Tesco development the same way Wire, Stains and Wigan were. was called in.

That single action meant we can never do what those other three clubs have been able to do. Unless we move out of this city

And yet Tesco were subsequently allowed to build a Megastore on Great Horton Road and shortly on Canal Road (where extensions were allowed anyway) and Morrisons were allowed to have a Matalan built on their Mayo Avenue site. That'll be to protect the city centre as well, then?

And the sodding city centre, which was supposed to be protected by wrecking our plans - well need I say more? Where the fcük is the Co-op, one of the big complainants, now?

We were stitched up good and proper.

And the only way you get a roof on the popular side, and indeed the only way to make any economic sense of it, IIRC, is a massive great cantilever anchored to a big new corporate facility - not a cheap option.

What's wrong with steel uprights same as on the on the other side and the same as both the north and south stands at Leeds?

wasnt the cantilever only necessary to eliminate posts supporting the roof and hence stop them blocking peoples view?. They dont seem to cause a massive problem in main stand. Surely we could put something up similar to main stand on pop side relatively cheaply, more so if we made a significant portion of it terracing instead of seating, which majority seem to prefer anyway.

Apparently you don't have pillars blocking the view in "stadiums fit for the 21st century", according to the RFL. Plus you'd not be able to fund a roof by itself - it would be a pretty big affair - since the extra income would be minimal but the cost substantial.

wouldnt have thought we'd have looked at doing it to generate extra income, more a case of guaranteeing our franchise. We really are caught between a rock and a hard case. We cant afford to improve odsal and yet if we move to a purpose built stadium/VP then we have to pay much higher rent than we currently do and also lose several of the income streams that the pledge deal depends on. Notice how council managed to slip this news out on a public holiday when council offices are normally shut.

We already have the speakers on poles blocking the view of the pop side, don't need anything extra. Personally I'd rather have no roof than yet more things blocking my view, although I'm probably in the minority there.

Those speakers are highly highly irritating.

I'd like to think if we developed the popular side we might remove those?



I could cope with some pillars if it meant we got a new stand!

doubt it would be extra as speaker poles could then be eliminated, with speakers moving up into the roof. So instead of all the speaker poles you'd have 3 or 4 pillars supporting roof. And looking at the ones on the main stand they arent ridiculously thick ones either. Swings and roundablouts really as, as adey says, we cant afford to do it anyway. But going forwards we are going to have to do something before 2015 franchise round.

Pillars would be a nightmare.... no thanks

How about NL1?

I cant think of one newer stand/stadium that has columns rather than the modern cantilever.

I would expect a solution similar to huddersfield to be used which negates the need for expensive piling and anchoring.

Still not cheap by any means given the size of the popular side.

Odsals problem when it comes to redevelopment is its sheer size, everything is done on a larger scale as the bowl is twice as big as it actually needs to be.

A move to VP looks ever more likely. Let's face it, it's what the council has wanted for decades.

I wonder how much it would cost Westfield to buy out of their agreement to build a shopping centre?

We have a prepared site and potential funding sat in the middle of town (assuming its still like that - I don't live anywhere near Bradford).

What funding?

At the moment, I suspect the value of Westfield's commitment is approximately two bent washers.

No way anyway would any council allow a second stadium to be built within sight of VP - imagine the uproar?. No-one could justify building a new stadium in the city centre anyway on any grounds, certainly not economic. And who would pay for it?

When's that merger with Halifax going to manifest itself?

I sit in the main stand and never notice the pillars. If the option are a) No new stand and supporters standing in the rain or b) A relatively cheap stand erected while we spend the next 40 years discussing the wholesale redevelopment of the site then I'd vote for option b.

We have to move past discussing £200million options and doing nothing.

I gather putting a roof over the popular terrace and related works, bit like a mirror of the main stand, would cost several million (was told that a while ago). It would generate little additional income on its own, so where would the funding come from?

Bear in mind too the layout of the site: the popular terrace does not extend as far along towards the Coral Stand as the Main Stand does, and there is the big bank above the top of the Popular Terrace that is not there in the same way behind the Main Stand. There is also the matter that - IIRC - the Bulls' long lease does not actually cover all the buildings above the Popular Terrace, and one of the transport plans had some of that land being used for the South Bradford transport improvements? You'd almost certainly be looking at new offices etc as part of any development, I think. have I suspect these factors could add to the cost. Anyone know how much the Main Stand cost to build for the 1986 world speedway championships?

I'm not sure whether a lid on the Popular Terrace would by itself be enough to tick all the RFL's boxes for stadium criteria by the time we get to 2015, although you would hope we'd tick most given last time our stadium was rated as being "in need of some improvement" rather than being a "tired old stadium" like the ones who were told they HAD to get a new stadium.

In all seriousness (although I do wish they'd get rid of those bloody speaker poles), I think Adey has hit the nail on the head.

Yeah I may change my mind when I'm p*ss wet through and freezing, but I'd actually prefer to not have a roof than the club waste their own money on building one. As has been said, it will not make any significant money back and certainly won't pay for itself, so the club paying for it would just mean that money could not be spent elsewhere.

Sure, if it's needed for a franchise, it's worth it and does pay for itself. But if not, I'd rather get wet and have the club spend the money on something far more important.

Didn't Peter Hood say last year that they had a back-up plan or plans? Or do they just do nothing, because in effect that is what they have been doing for the last 15 years while all these pie in the sky schemes came and went? And how much has Bradford Council spent on feasibility studies for all manner of projects that never materialised? It would be a real shame for the Club to have done so much work bringing the Fans back and not to have a Plan B for the Stadium!