Keioc A 4 Appendix 3

Tesco boss: Why Blues must go to Kirkby - Liverpool Echo.co.uk

Aug 11 2007 EXCLUSIVE by Nick Coligan, Liverpool Echo

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Sir Terry Leahy's letter to Evertonians: I have been an Everton fan all my life. The first game I saw was against Leyton Orient in December 1962 – I think we won 3 – 0. As a businessman my head rules, as a football fan it’s more complex – it’s about heart as well as head. Every Everton fan can make a rational assessment of where the club will end up at the start of every campaign, but in your heart you hope for a bit more. It’s what generates the excitement, the anticipation. Twenty teams enter a competition that only one can win, being a football fan essentially is not about being rational, more often than not the heart rules the head. I want to argue in this article that when it comes to the vote on Kirkby, it must be the other way round and in the best interests of the club we love, our heads must guide our hearts in making this decision. Now let me declare an interest right up front. Tesco will benefit if the £400 million redevelopment of Kirkby takes place. But that does not mean Everton will lose out. Everton will win too. The success of Tesco has been based on creating maximum benefit, and then sharing it between communities, customers, staff, shareholders and other stakeholders. It’s win win, not win lose. And at Kirkby the town wins, Tesco wins and Everton wins. How does it work? Well it’s an 80 acre site (Goodison is 7 acres) next to Kirkby town centre which Knowsley Council want to transform in a bold and ambitious way. That transformation brought about by the combination of Knowsley Council, Tesco and Everton will generate thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousands of leisure and shopping visits which will raise property values. It’s that increase in property values which allows all three partners to benefit from the scheme. If Everton built a new stadium alone, rather than as part of an overall development, the cost would be huge. In the case of the Kirkby proposal, if you allocated a share of the traffic, infrastructure and land costs to the stadium, a very conservative figure would be £25 million. The construction of the stadium itself would cost around £110 million. Barr Construction have an integrated design, steel manufacture and construction operation which makes huge savings on that figure. Tesco as the developer is forgoing the normal development profit on the construction of around £15 million, in addition to the contribution it is making directly. So if you went out to buy this stadium it would cost you £150 million. It has been designed to be extendable to 60,000 seats which, when it happens, will cost another £25 million and there is ample space in the stadium to add further lounges, facilities and finishes to the highest standards in the Premier League when the club completes its investment. This would be in addition to the very good provision from day one, but could be anything from £15 – £25 million dependent on what you ultimately want. So you are looking at a stadium which when finally developed is around £200 million, and £150 million from day one. It is therefore, most definitely, not a stadium on the cheap. It will be a fitting home for a club of Everton’s tradition and standing. It won’t have the memories of Goodison, but it will be a massive improvement in every other respect. It will be owned by Everton, and because of the contribution of Knowsley, Barr and Tesco, at a fraction of the cost of a stand alone scheme. The club could not presently raise the money to go it alone or redevelop Goodison to a similar standard. Even if they could, the difference of over £100 million would be used up in construction. Now, if any of that money can be raised, it can be used instead to develop the playing squad.

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Tesco boss: Why Blues must go to Kirkby - Liverpool Echo.co.uk

I know there has been talk of other sites. Tesco has looked at over 30 possible locations. The problem within the ‘loop’ site (10 acres) and Goodison (7 acres) is that they could (just) accommodate a new ground, but there would be no adjoining land for commercial development to pay for it. So the entire cost of the development would fall on the club, a burden they could not bear. The loop site has an occupier which would have to be bought out. By way of interest, Tesco owns a neighbouring site and we had hoped this would be the location for the club, but it simply could not be made to work. The Long Lane site is larger, but has 60 occupiers and serious traffic difficulties. Clearly it’s possible to lift the stadium design for Kirkby (or one like it) and drop it onto Goodison or the loop site – and in my heart as a fan, it looks nice. But unless the club is offered a concrete proposal to own a £150 million stadium for around £35 million investment by Everton, and delivered by 2010 / 11 then I’m afraid it is not a realistic option. The Kirkby stadium is based loosely on the Cologne stadium. It will be a traditional four sided England Premier League ground, with 21st century facilities. Kirkby has the best access within 45 mins of any Premier League ground. Some people are worried Kirkby is not in the City boundary. (We all know that Manchester City is in the City of Manchester and Manchester United is not!) But it is closer to Goodison than many of the locations suggested within the City boundaries. The City of Liverpool is around 450,000 people. But the City region, including of course Kirkby, is around 1.4 million. I believe it is right to think in terms of the City region. I have been involved in the regeneration of Liverpool since 1999 through my membership of Liverpool Vision. The £3 billion of investment going into the Kings Dock, the Grosvenor scheme and the office district would simply not have happened if Liverpool was only 450,000 people. It is an investment for the whole region, supported by all the Councils of Merseyside and benefiting the wider region, and the £400 million investment in the regeneration of Kirkby should be seen in the same light. I have heard it suggested that a ‘no’ vote for Kirkby would precipitate a change at the club, and thereby increase the likelihood of new investment. I have two reactions; first Bill Kenwright, Keith Wyness and David Moyes have turned a relegation side into a European side, something that a number of better invested clubs have failed to do. Second, the prospect of outside investment in the club is massively increased by the Kirkby proposal. Without it, any prospective investor knows that the first £150 million of investment would have to go into a stadium, with nothing to show on the pitch. With Kirkby, new investment could go straight into the team, with the prospect of a return by way of better results. One final point, in my business life I have learned the most valuable commodity is trust. Without it you don’t have much to build on. I may not always like it, but I’ve learned to trust the people closest to issues to make the best judgement. When the Board, the manager and the leading players of Everton are unanimous that a move to Kirkby is right, I know they have the best interest of the club at heart and I trust their judgement. Whichever way I look at it, the heart says Goodison but the head says Kirkby. Terry Leahy * WHAT do you think? Have you say on our EFC forum « previous12

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