Is there hope for Everton’s £300m Bramley Moore Dock stadium?

Everton FC’s plan for a £300m stadium at Peel’s Bramley Moore Dock has already got the fans roaring their approval. But when politics meets football, it’s impossible to predict the result. Will the Everton plan be kicked into the back of the net, or into the long grass? Andy Delaney is an Everton season ticket holder and head of the Liverpool office of Colliers International. He says the plan looks like a winner. “Fans love the idea of a stadium next to the river. There are infrastructure issues, yes, but I think fans are genuinely excited. This time, with city council backing, I believe its deliverable.” But political heavy weather risks making the pitch unplayable. Joe Anderson, Liverpool’s city mayor and serial stadium-plan backer, is preparing a bid for a seat in parliament for Everton’s home constituency of Liverpool Walton. Meanwhile, a new city region mayor will be elected on May 4. Both give the plan political propulsion. However, opposition figures are pressing for a cap of public funding for Everton, pointing out that it has a billionaire owner, Farhad Moshiri. It’s a topic being debated on the doorsteps as the general election campaign ramps up. The list of failed Everton stadium plans is long. The hope this time is that mayor Anderson’s decision to press Liverpool’s early stages bid to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games will provide politically acceptable cover for city council investment in a new stadium. Once the games are over, it could be leased to Everton. Chris Prescott, director at JLL, says: “The games are the one opportunity here, the trigger that could get the stadium plan going with a legacy development of hotels wrapped around it. It could drive Peel’s Liverpool Waters scheme. “But previous Everton plans failed due to financial viability, and I hope their new shareholder has deep pockets. It would be good for the city, and I’d like to be positive, but it’s hard to see it happening – it’s 50-50.” What do those involved say? Peel told EG it was early days. Everton FC, said to be playing a long game with a focus on expectation management, preferred to say nothing. On the face of it, a club already losing £114m a year with a risk of relegation (and consequently 70% reduced income) isn’t in a position to make this work. A stadium used 25 days a year is hard to justify, especially if stadium costs over-run, and they usually do. Deloitte project management director Geoff Aucock is an expert in stadiums and says politics and unrealistic viability projections can be a problem. “The crucial point will be the support of the city council. The trouble is that politicians tend not to say to clubs, ‘This plan is a nonstarter,’ because maybe 10% of the electorate might be in that stadium on Saturday, and it’s a big deal for them. It’s difficult for them to say, ‘Forget it.’ “Clubs have unreasonable expectations on the value of their naming rights and it’s a weak spot in the viability.” However, the Everton story has a happy ending because even if the stadium doesn’t get built, one property man is doing victory summersaults. Dan Gallagher, joint managing director at Stoford Properties, is celebrating the freedom that comes with the end of stadium blight at Stonebridge Cross. The site, owned by the city council, was on a shortlist for the Everton stadium development. Now – with the stadium going elsewhere – he can launch plans for a single unit of up to 1.2m sq ft on the 55-acre site near junction 4 of the M57 motorway. “We were out of the market for 12 months thanks to the stadium plan. Now we have the uncertainly lifted, and an oven-ready site hits the market,” he says. The end of Everton’s interest in Stonebridge means a formal joint venture with the council has now been signed and talks are already under way, with several occupiers looking for 100,000 sq ft plus. By accident, the timing is good. Stonebridge comes back onto the market as the North West begins to run out of large logistics sites. Everton may have a long hard road ahead, but for Stoford, things couldn’t have worked out better. Such is politics. Been here before This is Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson’s third attempt to sort out the Everton problem. In 2014, he agreed the club would work on plans to anchor a mixed-use development at Walton Hall Park, in the north of the city. When that failed, council-controlled Stonebridge Park was considered instead. In 2011, an unofficial fan group attempted a joint redevelopment on a 40-acre site near Goodison Park, to be shared with Liverpool FC. It followed the collapse in 2009 of Tesco and Everton’s £400m Project Kirkby stadium plan in which Tesco would get a 592,000 sq ft store for the town in return for a £120m-plus contribution to the stadium. Planning, the recession and changes in the retail sector killed the idea. In 2001, Houston Securities was selected to work with Everton on plans for Kings Waterfront, but the proposal fell flat in 2003 amid a £35m funding shortfall. From February 2017: Field of dreams or stuff of nightmares?