Very wealthy he has looked at Leeds united a couple of times. Think before Bates sold to GFH. Must have some poke to be interested in a club like ours (Leeds utd)

I'm still wondering who loses out if we move out. The council only get a peppercorn rent so no real loss. The RFL must have almost had back the amount of the original loan to the Bulls. Presumably the Bulls will be quids in if the can get a location for under our current cost. And AC will be savinfg a fortune if we pack in altogether.

Hasn't there always been rejections by locals of any development at Horsfall previously? I don't know why that is in my head

Yeah. Back in 2002 the plan was to sell the green space next to Horsfall (possibly the Horsfall land too) for housing to help finance the Odsal Sports Village. The OSV was to include a new smallish stadium for us, a football pitch, some 3 G pitches and a cycle track. The local residents kicked off as they use the green space for all sorts of activities apparently and I can see their point of view. It got reported on in Private Eye. Local councillors were getting nervous about losing votes but as it was the whole thing was scuppered when the scheme was called in by the then minister Stephen Byers who vetoed it on the grounds that a new Tesco at Odsal top would have a detrimental effect on the city centre.

That didn’t stop fellow objectors Asda and Morrison’s building their own massive new stores at nearby shortly after.

I imagine that if any expansion plans at Horsfall don’t impinge too much on the green space we could be ok. It’s also time the council grew a pair and actually built some sports infrastructure rather than let it rot.

The council would lose out because they would no longer be able to charge rates.
The RFL would lose out because they would have no tenant, no rent, and the lease would effectively become worthless unless someone else moved in!

Who has paid for the new facility at Sedbergh playing fields?

That makes a lot of sense. Also I know a coupleof football teams run from the ajoining pitches too. Hopefully if any development doesnt encroach towards where the housed areas are they may not be as bothered then

Totally agree it is probably in part to this lack of structure we find ourselves still at Odsal all these years later. You would have hoped after Asda and Morrisons sprung up there would have been grounds to go back and appeal but I a guessing nobody ever did. Can not understand inthe slightest why a grocery supermarket would impede on the town centre. A new state of the art centre such as the Broadway you could totally understand

If I were Chalmers I'd be publicly posturing to walk away leaving the RFL with a massive white elephant on their hands, and privately offering them a much, much reduced sum to take the whole thing off their hands - once he has the keys to the castle, he can secure long term funding against the lease and invite his own developers in to help stop the rot.

Smart guy our chairman

Which is why Carter & Hudgell were both sticking their oars in earlier in the year and telling the RFL to get full value for the lease.

Forgot about the rates bit. I was suggesting that the RFL must have had a fair chunk of their pound of flesh from the rent we have been paying them.

if the £72k pa rental figure that is often quoted is true they've received £370k over the 5 years the lease with them has been in place. Given they were rumoured to have paid between £800k and £1m for the lease they've not really done well out of the deal have they?

Have we always paid this amount? Something is nagging me to say that we used to pay more, but I could be wrong.

January 2012 Rfl paid £1.5m (£1.25m for Bulls, £250k was the 20%VAT to send to HMRC) for the Odsal lease. Bulls already had £900k secret unsecured loan with RFL which was beginning to have awkward questions asked of the RFL. So the RFL (unexpectedly according to Hood) redeemed their loan, took the last asset of a member club in financial distress and handed over £600k, of which £250k needed to be given to HMRC.

And the dominoes continued to fall.

IIRC Parkin was the guy Caisley was looking to bring onboard as an investor at time Hood sold lease.

Is Parkin interested in Philanthropy?

Nobody else n the right mind would have invest in us hoping to see a return of cash would they?

rumour at time was he was more interested in Odsal site than the rugby. He has a massive logistics company which was looking for sites close to motorways and I seem to remember there's a possibility of a link road into the back of the Odsal site from the Euroway junction of 606. Given it can't be used for housing due to the unknown nasties in the ground underneath some form of light industrial/commercial re-development is one of few schemes that actually make sense.

The RFL bought the stadium off the then-Bulls at the very start of 2012. So the RFL should have had over 7 1/2 years rent so far.
Rent at £72k (which WAS the rent from the start). And that the total cost to the RFL incl fees and stamp duty was £1.336m. Through a combination of routine amortisation of the cost and then a BIG write down at the end of 2017, it now stands in the RFL Accounts as an asset valued at £750k.

If the RFL walked away or for any other reason the lease reverted to the Council, the RFL would take a £750k hit. And that (and this is pretty crucial IMO) on 25/5/18 the RFL pledged its main assets- assumed to include Odsal, although you can't tell from the filed charge document - as security for borrowings.
Effectively mortgaged? In which case, they may be in deep if they try and dispose of it for less than Book Value! It has been restated as an "investment property" in the accounts, meaning its purpose now is to either earn rental income or to be held and then sold hopefully at a profit. As opposed to it being treated same as e.g. Red Halla as it used to be - i.e. an asset for use in the business.

Is the answer not as simple as moving to Guiseley, flogging Odsal to Parkin for his trucks and using the proceeds towards a new facility?

If we do move out and the council end up selling the Odsal site, then I have absolutely zero faith or trust in the council to put the proceeds towards building a new stadium/facility that we could use.

This is Bradford council they will sell the site and get 2 more waterfalls outside the city hall.

To be fair I don't think there is much chance of the council selling it and building a new stadium for the benefit of only 4k members of the Bradford public. It would be a different story if the council had a good reason to want us out and were trying to bribe us to leave.

It would be ironic if the RFL were relying on Odsal as security for borrowing like we were in 2012. Especially if we left.

The most sensible solution would be a community stadium built on the Richard Dunns site with the stadium shared between Bulls and PA. The council could then sell off both Odsal and Horsefall for development

If only all the parties involved took the sensible option every time.

I think there would be various constraints on who the council could sell the Horsfall or Odsal sites to. For example landfill gets mentioned a lot but the proximity of those new houses makes that a non starter at Odsal. The nature of the contaminated land at Odsal might also be a stumbling block. Unless you can be sure to make the land safe you can't build houses there. Bear in mind also that there is a surplus of land in Bradford that has outline planning permission already - the developers are deliberately not building on it yet in order to maximise their financial returns. There may not be quire appetite for the land as you might think.

As for Horsfall the green space is greatly valued by local residents who would kick up a proper fuss if they were going to lose it.

As af said on the full 80mins the Odsal can has been kicked down the road for about 60 years. There have been more artist impressions of new stadia than I've had hot dinners. There just hasn't been the political will to make it happen. It's a sad indictment on Bradford that far smaller towns and cities with a far smaller sporting pedigree have managed to build much better facilities.