Thursday sees what could be the final act in a saga which goes back over nearly a decade. In 2003 the York City Football Club came within a few weeks of losing its Bootham Crescent home. Only the hard work of the present Directors of the Club saw it raise an unlikely £2 million loan from the Football Foundation which eventually saw ownership of the ground returned to the Club.
However one proviso was that a new stadium had to be provided within a 10 year timescale.
Whether the Stadium project should have taken until this week, to reach a critical decision time, is open to discussion. But we are where we are now.
Initially the football club led in the search for a suitable site. What became clear though was that the preferred choice of many supporters (Bootham Crescent) was simply not large enough to generate the kind of non match day income that a successful club will be dependant on.
The Council took on a leading role in 2007 and invested in a project team. (more…)