Bright future: when plans were first unveiled in 2017, Selhurst Park’s new main stand was estimated to cost £75m. Now estimates top £200m
Plans could be altered to reduce costs on the long-delayed project, and that could even require another renewal of planning permission from Croydon Council, according to club chairman
Cup-winners: chairman Steve Parish and manager Oliver Glasner with the Conference League trophy
Crystal Palace has yet to secure the funding necessary for its £200million-plus project to build the main stand at Selhurst Park, increasing capacity for home games to 34,000.
The shock admission was made in an interview given by Palace chairman Steve Parish, who blamed rampant inflation for building materials, and said that spending on the playing squad has been given priority ahead of the club’s first two seasons of European football.
“The reason that everybody hasn’t got a shiny new stadium is that the money will always go to the team, if it’s there,” Parish said in his wide-ranging interview with The Athletic.
Palace’s first European competition saw them add the UEFA Conference League trophy to the FA Cup and Charity Shield successes of the previous season. Almost as soon as the squad returned in triumph from Leipzig in May, demolition works began to remove six houses from Wooderson Close, and other enabling work around the ground before construction proper can commence.
May day: the bulldozers moved in on Wooderson Close four months ago
The project has been a long time coming.
It’s almost a decade since the plans were unveiled, and it is five years since the space-age new stand, stuffed with corporate hospitality boxes, was originally due to be completed.
The global pandemic and the redevelopment of the Palace academy both saw delays in the progression of the new stand, where estimated costs have more than doubled since it was first revealed in 2017.
“The material cost is the big issue,” Parish said.
“There’s been such inflation, so we’re just reviewing materials that we’re using on the facade and maybe some slight design changes, just to see if we can value-engineer the cost down slightly…
“… It will get done. We’re absolutely committed to it. It’s essential.”
Much of the work can only be done over the summer months, outside the football season.
But with boardroom uncertainty with American billionaire John Textor and the arrival more recently of Woody Johnson, the long-standing question about whether Palace actually has the money to pay for the project has finally been answered by Parish.
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“We’re looking at different ways of funding, but that will be in place,” Parish told The Athletic.
“We’re working with people on that. We’re talking to the banks. It’s more managing the construction, processing inflation and trying to reduce some costs.
“It has [dragged on]. But the reason that everybody hasn’t got a shiny new stadium is that the money will always go to the team, if it’s there. We spent on the team, which is the more recent reason that it isn’t fully going on.
“But also the cost keeps increasing in this environment, and we keep needing to try to find smarter ways of doing it to get the right return on it.
“So there’s no one reason. There are complications. The six houses, one of them took ages for us to buy because it was a private house, then you have the Sainsbury’s land.
“It’s a very complicated site. It’s not like a lot of other sites. It’s been slow going, and we were diverted by covid and doing the academy, and then what the team needed spent on it for two European campaigns. But it will get done.
“Trying to compete on the pitch at the same time as developing the club’s infrastructure is hard, but I think we’re doing a great job… Doing [the stadium] in stages will save us a lot of money, rather than parts of it not being ready and having people charge you money while they’re waiting to start.
“There’s a possibility that we go back with some planning tweaks, but we need to start, and we want to be piling this season if we can.”
Five of the six Wooderson Close houses were council-owned, for which Palace paid £2.26million. The sixth, privately owned, was bought for £850,000.
Croydon Council is set to receive £3.5million in phased Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) payments from the works over the next two years.
Read more: Demolition works get underway for Selhurst £200m main stand
Read more: FT reports: Palace’s US billionaire owners look to sell shares
Read more: Council finally completes sale of houses for Selhurst stand
Read more: Build costs soar to £200m for new main stand at Selhurst Park
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I hope that they go and ask Arsenal how they manage and did it fir their stadium and the lessons they got right and what lessons there are to learn. Modula and moving sections into place may be a good idea. The olympic stadium also has good pointers and Americans rotating pitches too. My concern is that the additional numbers are not that big. Do we have demand for 60,000 seats would be where I would start. Whats the sweet spot. Also I note the Barcelona and Real Madrid stands soaring up give a good view down onto the pitch. Sometimes contractors prefer the slow and complicated rather than the parallel offsite build and assemble as the liberty ships were built.
I would be happy to cone in an advise to find proven creative solutions ring me.
Steve Parish, his fellow CPFC owners and the general public might be more convinced of your business acumen and project management skills if your self-promoting poster on the Purley Way, for the Mayor of Croydon elections in May 2022, wasn’t still there over four years after you came bottom with 1,114 votes
Arsenal failed to win a major trophy (excluding the pre-season friendly that is the Charity Shield) for 20 years after they moved into their new stadium. The stadium costs were a significant factor in denying the manager or head coach transfer funds over that period. The Emirates was built for £390million – an entire stadium for less than twice as much as Palace might pay for a single stand.
Now, as for Tottenham and the price they are paying for their shiny new stadium…
But what Gavin knows about sports stadia could be scribbled on the back of a postage stamp.
He’s clearly never been to the Bernabéu or Camp Nou, where oxygen masks and high-powered binoculars are recommended for anyone in the top tiers.
London’s Olympic Stadium, where West Ham are squatters, does not have a “rotating pitch”.
And you can only build a 60,000-seater stadium if you have the land to do so. Palace barely have the land for the planned extension – which is why they’ve had to demolish six houses.
Most unfortunate. It is what it is as they say in the game!