Manchester United has confirmed it will meet the estimated construction cost for a replacement for Old Trafford, while asking the UK government to support transport and area regeneration. Chief Operating Officer Collette Roche said the club will meet the bill and that Sir Jim Ratcliffe has set a tentative completion target of 2030 for what the club calls “New Trafford”.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand the stadium is our responsibility. We want to provide a great stadium for our fans. We will pay the \u00a32 billion I think it is at the last estimate to be able to do that,\u201d Roche said on the We Built This City podcast.<\/p>\n
Roche made clear the club intends to fund the stadium itself but wants public support for the wider infrastructure that will allow the venue to function on matchdays and beyond. Roche said Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, and the Trafford Council are “really keen to work with us.” She argued that improved transport links and regeneration are necessary if the stadium is to be successful for supporters and for local businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s no point building the best and biggest stadium in the UK and it being on an island where you can’t get to it because the transport links aren’t there, or people can’t come on a non-match day, or local businesses can’t be part of. So our ask of the government is that they support, not the stadium build, but support the infrastructure and the regeneration of the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plans have encountered obstacles. In August the project reportedly stalled over a price dispute with land owner Freightliner, which was said to value surrounding land at about \u00a3400 million ($531 million) while the club estimated the figure at \u00a340-50 million ($53-66 million).<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when we’ve looked at it really closely, it actually ticks so many boxes for the government around their growth strategy. So it\u2019s very easy for us to use this as a catalyst to help deliver the government plans,\u201d Roche concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Club will cover the \u00a32 billion New Trafford build and is seeking government help for infrastructure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179],"tags":[1032,1171,1170],"class_list":["post-3957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","tag-contract-disputes","tag-infrastructure","tag-stadium-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}