When he lobbed the cheque at Bill this stadium was going to cost £300m and made obvious financial sense.
The total cost will now be in excess of £500m meaning the project is probably only borderline beneficial from a financial standpoint. So, Whatever assumptions he arrived with concerning funding BMD have plainly gone up in smoke. No bank is going to touch this without penal interest rates given the changes in risk profile.
The £300m figure was a bit dubious in the extreme. That'll probably get a Middlesbrough Riverside Stadium. Size and design. The early reports for £300m was for a 50,000 stadium.
I'm no expert but checking on costs of various stadiums, Arsenal's for example nearly £400m over a decade ago, we know of the NWL and the Lucas Oil Stadium was $800m a decade ago. For us to build a quality stadium £500m upwards is probably a minimum (outside London).
A lot depends on how bold the club is following the depature of Elstone. If you follow his "conservative" mantra which is clear Meis also followed, we'll be lucky to get more than 55,000 and it will not be as good as it can possibly be either. It'll get built, it might be later, but will it be the best? I'm not convinced too much talking down the ambition of the stadium in the last 12 months.
