Is there any really hard evidence that Odsal is that much more expensive to maintain, other than the £35k drain repair (which didnt seem to me to be necessarily unique to Odsal)?

I only ask because I remember sitting through a fans forum circa 2000 during which Caisley read out a list of major items of repair that needed to be carried out immediately, as a matter of urgency, if the ground were to retain its safety certificate. The main item was a new roof on the main stand which was extremely urgent. The main impression given was that Odsal was on the verge of being condemned.

Over the years since then I dont remember any of these urgent repairs being carried out (although I accept that some of them may have been behind the scenes) and talk of losing the safety certificate seems to have gone away.

Odsal is undoubtedly a big open space, but what exactly do the club spend extra money on, compared to other clubs?

Great post from Highlander above - realistic and well reasoned IMO.

We have a long leasehold on Odsal, not the freehold, so I suspect the lease will require us to continue to use the site as a RL stadium and will not allow us to use it for any other replacement purpose. Or to assign the lease. Without approval.

Re VP, I formed the same view as Highlander. As I see it, the most likely option:

1 - Council forms Stadium Operating Company.
2 - SOC gets temporary loan from council.
3 - SOC buys VP off Gibb Pension Fund
4 - Council pays Bulls £x to surrender the Odsal peppercorn rent lease, on condition proceeds used to buy a 1/3 (?) share in the SOC.
5 - Council cuts deal with BCFC to enable them to buy a 1/3 share in SOC (soft loan? Payment, allied to Bulls leaving Odsal, to compensate BCFC for having to share stadium?)
6 - Council buys the remaining 1/3 (?) share in SOC
7 - SOC repays temp loan to Council.
8 - Council funds payments to Bulls (and maybe BCFC) from sale/development of the now-vacant Odsal site. Probably makes a big profit on the deal. Keighley crew go apolplectic because they can find nothing to go apoplectic about in the deal.
9 - SOC charges Bulls and bantams rent, and operates all the concessions, bars etc etc.

End result: BCFC get to stay at VP on secure long-term footing; Council grinning from ear to ear for the kudos of "having saved professional sport in the city" AND turning in a big profit for the council tax payers AND getting rid of the allegations of favouring the Bulls; and Bulls get to lose their home and have to make do with a solution considered unsatisfactory and disadvantageous by most Bulls fans.

But hang on: this is not 2002 - I must be stuck in a time warp somewhere? I could have sworn I could hear the scratching of groundhogs...

Leigh's new stadium cost £17.5m, that's everything not just a roof, as part of the c£80m sporting village.
Regarding the 'value' of VP - the value of property has nothing to do with the cost of construction, it is essentially how valuable the land is for it's next best use. There is likely to be very little demand for that piece of land in Mannigham. In fact the demolition & land clearance would probably cancel out the value of the land if it was available as a clear site. If it is zoned for residential all that would end up being built is low cost social housing.

The new stand at Blackpool FC's Bloomfield Road cost £8.5m - including four floors, with a Supporters Bar, hotel and other community uses.

Only thing I could think to do with the pop side at Odsal is to build a seated tier above the terracing and then above that have boxes / offices etc at the top of the stand - level with the upper concourse. Don't know how that would be engineered!

At Odsal the engineering of it all is key. filling the bowl would be a huge expense, as is finding a practical way to put a roof on the terracing. The Kop at Valley parade was built in less than 6 months. but it had the benefit of being easier to do.

talking about Leigh and Warrington's stadia is quite irrelevant as neither is Odsal, and both were flat, vacant sites when the stadia were planned.

The council have put £15mill aside to develop Odsal and the sporting facilities.

£5mill would buy Valley Parade. and get the goodwill of City and Bulls fans across the city and the surrounding district.

the money now used to maintain odsal could be used to buy new red amber and black seats for half of the ground, so we feel at home!!!

that leaves £10 to renovate Dicky Dunns and change Odsal so it can be used as a community sports venue, and make the pitch longer at VP so we have a full size playing surface. Simples!

A roof above the pop terrace would probably have to be a cantilever jobbie, therefore with a largish building behind it to anchor the roof. Otherwise, you end up with big supporting pillars, which are not considered appropriate these days. So you end up paying not just for a roof but for a large stand. the problem then is that you'd have to do a lot of excavation for the building, and daylight would be an issue. This was indeed what was in one of the earlier plans, where the bowl was to be left as is.

Unless there is a specific figure in the lease agreement (no-one seems to know), I guess if there isn't to be a stadium at Odsal the price of buying VP might well go up.

www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/464 ... %20VILLAGE Still hope?

www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/464 ... %20VILLAGE Still hope?

www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/464 ... %20VILLAGE Still hope?

www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/464 ... %20VILLAGE Still hope?

STATEMENT REGARDING ODSAL SPORTING VILLAGE
To read or listen to media reports arising from the leaked report that goes before Bradford Council's Executive next Tuesday, 30 March 2010, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Odsal Sports Village is an ex-OSV, as dead as Monty Python's famous parrot. But that is not the case. Not the case at all.

The Odsal Sports Village partners - Bradford Council, Bradford College, Bradford Bulls, the University of Bradford, Yorkshire Forward and the Bradford & Airedale NHS Trust - are precisely where we expected to be in the process at this point in time.

The leaked Report to the Council's Executive explains that the OSV, in the form of the so-called £75m ‘compliant' scheme, could still be delivered - but only if it becomes developer-led.

In other words, to be delivered in its ‘compliant' form that provides everything that each of the partners wants the OSV project needs private sector involvement a) to bring additional up-front funding to the scheme and b) to shoulder some of the financial risk. That was always likely to be the case and is no surprise at all.

The Report goes on to outline half a dozen scaled-down versions of the compliant scheme that might be built without the private sector, ranging in cost between £20 million and £40 million or so. That kind of money buys a lot of stadium and sports and leisure, educational and other facilities through which to deliver massive benefits for people right across the Bradford district.

Phil Barker, Bradford Council's Assistant Director Leisure Services and the Council's lead officer on the OSV told BBC Radio Leeds this week that the Council and its partners are not at the stage of having to consider those less costly options just yet.

He's still hopeful that the original scheme is do-able, albeit perhaps on a longer time-scale than originally envisaged.

Interviewed on Radio Leeds Mr Barker said: "I think we have to look at all options if I'm honest, but I think some of the options are not going to deliver all of the partners' ambitions.

"Therefore we'll have to see whether we move to any of those, but at the moment I think we are still trying to put together a project which delivers the outputs that all the partners want and is in the region of the compliant scheme outputs.

"Whether it costs us £75m that's a different thing, but if we can deliver what the partners want, deliver all of the outputs, the space they need for all of the groups they're trying to provide service for, then I think that's where we're going at this moment in time".

The Odsal Sports Village remains on course and a further update will be given following the 30 March Executive.

Source! www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/464 ... %20VILLAGE

Source! www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/464 ... %20VILLAGE

Someone deliberately shaking the tree?????

This executive meeting on Tuesday is open to the public. If anyone is free to go along that could be a good idea. We may not be allowed audience participation

but we could at least get an unbiased view of proceedings. I would put myself down as a maybe. It is my half day but I would have to get childcare at fairly short notice

STOP!!! Hold everything. www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/464 ... %20VILLAGE

STOP!!! Hold everything. www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/464 ... %20VILLAGE

Can the Mods please merge all these OSV threads into the sticky one?

I'm sick of reading about it. It'll never get off the ground in my lifetime so I'd rather read about something that will actually affect my enjoyment of watching the Bulls.

'The OSV remains on course'. IIRC that was to be built by 2012?

OSV remains on course, apart from the 'there's nowhere near enough money' bit.

Actually it's quite a good idea, well done.



Apart from point 4 which seems a bit strange seeing as they paid you to take on the lease in the first place. But I'm prepared to let that one go, mainly because I'm a bit bored of the Odsal saga now.

That's the key issue, the site is prohibitive, and I think it's the reason for these ridiculous costs.

Put it this way, you would get more change out of £15 million building on a flat site like Cougar Park than you would at Odsal.

I don't really understand what Bulls fans have against Valley Parade.

And even more confusing is the countless number of suggestions on the T&A site that the Bulls should move out of Bradford

In simple terms....




The area it's in is the main one. It's known as a rough area and people don't like taking their families and parking their cars there.




People are sick and tired of the council.


In all honesty, I'm not really interested by the whole thing anymore. I've not expected to get anything since we moved back to Odsal in 2003 and nothing has happened since to change my mind. I'll only become interested again when I actually see work being done or a move is confirmed.

Hmm.

Makes you wonder if sources close to Valley Parade, who may have a vested interested in the OSV not going ahead, are at work here somewhere?

We seem to be going around in circles. A couple of years ago we had an affordable and achievable plan, I saw some of the blueprints as did a few others on here. Those plans came after a lot of pi55ing about with schemes that were too ambitious and unaffordable. Unfortunately that plan was then shelved for a more ambitious one again. Now that's been dropped and we're looking at more achievable plans again, and the council is about to spend over a million on another feasibility study. That's just taking into account the period 2006-2010.

It's a shambles and I fear while we're relying on the council we'll either end up with something that's the bare minimum cost and ambition (not including a stadium or any re-development) or nothing at all and continued indecision and waste. I would dearly love to be proved wrong but I'll believe it can happen when I'm sat in it!



One has to wonder. I think there are also others with a vested interest in building something large in order to service their egos rather than provide something achievable. Once you have both these parties at work the end result is nothing at all.

Flat? Cougar Park?

They done away with the slope there then now have they?

Ground sharing with the Cougars at a suitable non flooding site up the Aire Valley just off the bypass would suit me fine.