Did broke Birmingham City Council get best deal when Blues bought Bordesley Park?
It's the landmark project that’s got everyone buzzing, especially Blues fans - but was the deal a good one for the city's residents?
Morning! Welcome to the 2nd edition of Inside Birmingham with Jane Haynes (that’s me). I wanted to take a few moments of your time before you get into today’s exclusive content to explain why I launched this newsletter.
There are now a lot to pick from, some truly superb, and all vying for your precious time and your cash. Here in the city some new kids on the block have been doing great work, joining long standing and cherished hyperlocals and websites, writers and activists keen to wax lyrical about the city’s challenges and joys.
But I believe there is room for something focussed wholly on the city’s political and social affairs, on the people who run the city and the decisions they make, and how they impact you - written by the only journalist locally who is in the midst of the political shenanigans every day. If you agree, please subscribe and share.
As promised, you’ll be getting a mayoral election special in your inbox any day - watch out for my take on whether Andy Street really is down and out, as one poll has suggested. But for now let’s crack on with today’s update - my probe into whether the landmark deal struck between Birmingham City Council and Birmingham City FC is ‘best value’ for the city’s residents.
Sold short or genius deal?
Summary: Today, in a newsletter exclusive, I’ve been looking into the price paid to Birmingham City Council for the Bordesley Park site in East Birmingham. With the help of reliable sources, I can tell you the sum involved is in the region of £51 million - a whopping £30 million less than the land was valued at less than two years ago by a major property developer who made a bid for it. There’s a suggestion the full value of the deal could edge towards £60 million based on ‘a range of scenarios’ - but even then it’s still a pretty startling gap in just 20 months. Is it down to a poorly negotiated deal, falling land values dampening interest, war, Liz Truss or something else? Is it a bad deal, or the best the city could ever dream of? Read on for the full story and why it matters to residents.
There were audible gasps and muttered ‘wows’ from fans at Birmingham City FC's open house gathering last week when stunning AI impressions flashed up of the spaceship-esque super stadium planned for the Bordesley Park ‘Wheels’ site in East Birmingham.
Knighthead Capital Management’s co chief executive and Blues chair Tom Wagner had paused proceedings briefly before the star image was put on the big screen. It hardly needed the additional build-up. This was what everyone had been craning their necks to see, figuratively speaking, ever since news broke about the project.
The flagship stadium that Knighthead plans to build will sit at the heart of a multi-billion pound mega sporting complex. The vision behind it has been showered in hyperbole. If all goes to plan, the resulting ‘sports quarter’ will be a tremendous asset for the city, with it’s hotel, office blocks, football academy and training facilities, restaurants and pubs, leisure facilities and shops. Wagner even (half) promised mini-golf, which sold it to me.
It will bring to life an area that’s been hit hard by inequality and a lack of opportunity, where youth unemployment remains stubbornly high. It will deliver jobs too, hundreds, potentially thousands, of them. The potential for it to be a catalyst for more development is clear, with the firm saying it’s likely to invest upwards of £2 billion into the scheme.
News of the deal has not just excited Blues fans and sports lovers, but has got people talking about Birmingham again in positive ways.
After the kicking our city has been getting recently that’s something worth hanging on to. Even our own Prime Minister hasn’t missed an opportunity to throw mud in our city’s direction for political gain, most recently in PMQs this week.
It might then feel churlish that I’m now digging over this landmark moment, looking for issues while simultaneously hoping there are none. But right now every single citizen, every employee and every business in the city is feeling the impact, or about to, of the city council’s dire financial crisis.
You likely don’t need me to remind you of Birmingham’s current travails but here goes. Council tax has just gone up 9.99% and will go up the same again next year. At the same time the council is shutting down or reducing services in every neighbourhood.
Libraries will close for want of just over £2 million. The entire youth service could be protected for the same.
Fees and charges are going up across the board. You’re going to have to pay to get rid of rats. Bins are soon going to be collected fortnightly. Street lights are being dimmed, parks won’t be maintained fully, streets will go unswept.
Over 600 people working for the council will lose their jobs. The council has also been told it must sell off land and assets to raise £500 million this year to meet the terms of a Government offer of Exceptional Financial Support. It’s money that will be used to help plug gaps in statutory services, pay redundancy costs of those axed workers and contribute to paying off the equal pay claims of thousands of underpaid women staff.
That’s why the amount it managed to squeeze out of the mega-rich owners of the Blues matters enormously, no matter how big the dream package on its way.
Roll back to June 2022. Following a marketing engagement exercise, Birmingham City Council secured multiple bids for the 48-acre Bordesley Park ‘Wheels’ site. The deal that councillors were recommended to approve was for £81 million, from industrial and logistics property developers PLP Property, based in London and Manchester. It’s a company with projects all over the country, with a formidable record of turning industrial land into factories and units in dozens of locations including Milton Keynes, Stafford, Liverpool, Ellesmere Port, Salford, Dartford and Reading.
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