Multi-million-pound chasm emerges over Manchester United’s land valuation

Surely Network Rail or Trafford Council could use their CPO Powers for a regeneration scheme which is clearly has economic, social, environmental and transport benefits to the area.

Is there no-one with a commercial brain down at Old Trafford? Anyone could see they were handing Railfreight a ransom position on a plate. Better, surely, to have reached Heads of Terms on the land deal before making their grand announcement at MIPIM?

Man United: Hey, do you want to hold a £350m ransom position over us?
Freightliner: Sure
Manu United: Hold my beer

The least surprising news ever.

This has CPO written all over it…..

Surely MUF-C are going to make an awful lot of money out of this. Would they not agree a deal to pay an overage to Freightliner – so Freightliner get an annual return. As Mark Twain I think said ‘buy land they’re not making it any more’ or something along those lines. Surely Freightliner should not be made to suffer after all they are a commercial business too! So fairs fair!

Pie in the sky

@BobDawson you forget there’s stakeholders bending over backwards to provide Freightliner with a better site over at St. Helens

The beneficiaries, namely the Glazers will not pay and Ratcliffe will not pay. Absent billionaire owners in the USA and Monaco. Yet they expect the public to pay to move an asset in Old Trafford out of Greater Manchester to Merseyside.
The club does not have the land, will not use its own resources, has just sacked half the staff but this private enterprise was the public purse to sweeten their plans.
Last week Coe was in the USA with a begging bowl to the so called good and great.
It is time that the stadium charade was exposed.
Regenerate the location by all means but let the very rich owners of the football club pay their way.

Shambolic decision making from MUFC. So much for all the “experts” sitting around the various tables.

MCFC did not fall into the trap of a big showy public announcement before pulling together the land for the City Football Academy.

Clearly a ransom position, but is Freightliner including the cost of building the new facility in theirs?

Why are freightliner going to move?
1. The land may be worth £50 million on its own but the cost of moving a freight terminal to St Helens, reconfiguring track there, permanently losing a freight route through Manchester etc will be far more than this.
2. United are so naive to show their hand like they did that this was inevitable. Manchester City didn’t announce anything grandiose with their new campus 10 years ago until they held all of the land except for the United fan with the car garage who was holding out.

As much of a rookie error as this sounds, I want this development to happen and I hope it doesnt get drowned in negtivity like a lot of recent large scale british developments have done.

I fear the tax payer is going to get done over for the benefit of the private company who own the football club.

United would have been far better going with the family from the Middle East, like City. The current set up at United, is not about community, or the history but about penny pinching and getting others. i.e the taxpayer to shell out. This is the classic,cheap attitude, which is so apparent everywhere, you go in this country. Nobody wants to pay for anything, or experience any disruption, and that is why our infrastructure is falling apart. This will trundle on for five years, and then a classic watered down British,version will be built, exuding the lack of ambition, we are known all over the world for. How long before Coe departs?

COO of Man U was asked at MIPIM – do you think it is a risk to announce these plans prior to land assembly? She didn’t really answer the question but there is clearly not one commercial bone in the bodies of these people running the club when it comes to real estate.

The killer rumour – MUFC were offered part of the Freightliner site circa 10 years ago for £15m and did not want to buy it.

Now that is as dumb as what they did at MIPIM this year.

Where were the so called “experts”? Laughable.

Freightliner could be moving to St Helen is better than Trafford park because it more sensible than stupidity freightliner though in central Manchester make delayed response for everyone who waiting for train. Need to move to St Helen it will be very sensible.

Ratcliffe will sit back and wait for Burnham/the government’s pockets to blink every time the project hits a hurdle -now they have all bought into his ‘vision’/begging bowl. It’s his M.O.

Sounds like the politicians wanted to grab the sexy headlines and to hell with the commercial impacts. As soon as I heard this we all knew the land value would quadruple with that programme timeline… no time for CPO. Look for another scheme with control

Freightliner don’t really have a ransom strip because United are the only cerdible purchaser for their land. If the two parties don’t come to an agreement United will refurbish the current stadium and Freightliner will stay in their current inadequate site and freight traffic will continue to clog up Manchester city centres railway system. In this scenario everyone is a looser so I suspect they will come to an agreement.

Freightliner top execs are by law required to make as much money for shareholders as possible. If they also pocket several millions for themselves, as hired employees, who cares? Capital Corporations are not created or designed to serve the Common Good.

The Masterplan that everyone has bought into (Trafford MBC, the Mayor of Greater Manchester and MUFC) relies on the acquisition of the whole of the Freightliner site. However MUFC only need a small part of it to realise their ambitions. Trafford and the Mayor need it all.

So it is not just MUFC who have to take the blame for the stupidity of making an announcement at MIPIM and going out to a significant round of public consultation without the land assembly position locked down.

As said elsewhere in these comments MCFC did not go down that route with the City Football Academy – but there again they had MCC and good people in the Club who understood big picture real estate. Stupidity on all fronts and a lack of leadership from the public sector partners in this scheme.

This is farcical,90k jobs,two off the biggest sites n uk,Hs2/Hinckley point don’t employ 90k people
Plus freightliner have put the price they value their site at, if that land went on the open market they would probably their evaluation,seeing its in a prime location,

@Ste think this is referring to jobs in the long run, not construction related

Ste, I agree with you about the 90,000 job claim which sounds fanciful, however I disagree that the Freightliner land is a prime site. The abnormal costs associated with clearing the Freightliner site for redevelopment considerably reduces the land value. Without a full regeneration masterplan public money for site clearance, contamination clean up and relocation costs will not be available. Therefore the only real credible purchaser for the site is United, so if Freightliner wants to relocate to St. Helens they will have to do a deal otherwise all parties will be left with the status quo.

Another example of the arrogance of Jim Radcliffe who clearly believes that if he wants something he will able to get it on his terms and everybody else will fall into place. He did the same with trying to buy Jarrad Branthwaite from Everton and his announcement before that Man utd would now only pay what they wanted and everybody would have to fall into line i.e. He believed that players would be lining up to sign for them and clubs would want to sell them on utds terms. Both have been proved wildly wrong.. He and his organisation/staff with their input into Man utd seem to think the same over this.
Yes, moving the fright yard to St Helens makes sense all round but Frieghtliner are correct in what they are doing as a business. That land may have been worth £50m on the open market as speculative development land but now it’s not, it in demand and carries a higher price. As for Wembley of the north, that’s just a way to try and attach it to the national and Northern identity to attempt to get as much goblvernment funding as possible. Another form of arrogance relating to people in Manchester believing they are some sort of capital of something, and believing that everybody else feels the same. They don’t.

Aside from anything else, what does Wembley of the north even mean? We can see huge concerts at the Ethiad, Anfield, old Trafford cricket ground and Everton’s new ground, so not missing out there (plus, it’s not great being at these stadium concerts anyway so the bigger, the worse it is to see, to get in and out of etc) If its a cup final, you are only going if it’s your team which won’t be every year, and even then you will struggle to get a ticket whether it in London or anywhere else. No advantage there then. International games? Who cares? Struggling to see who benefits other than Man utd and Trafford Borough / Greater Manchester. Man utd should have to pay every penny of the development and deal with the market on their own, to fund exactly what it is, a private commercial company wanting to develop land and make money.

The area will generate £7b per annum and want ALL the site holders in the red zone to give their land away cheaply. Doesn’t sound like a good deal except for the Old Trafford shareholders who can then dispose of their shares at Top prices. The disposal of the investments by JR and the GLZRS could be potentially a tax free disposal. Nice on the back of others!

A shambles. Clearly no one at MUFC, Trafford MBC and at the GMCA have the first clue at how to deliver a major, complex initiative. They all should take a long hard look at themselves.

I can only imagine being in the room when the Mayor of Greater Manchester is told that the Women’s World Cup Final in 2035 will not be held at the new Old Trafford – the parody from the Downfall movie comes to mind.

Fanciful projected figures from unreliable consultants will no longer con the public.
90,000 new jobs ! That is not credible.
£2b new stadium costs – add 50%
Timescales – 2030 to complete an unnecessary new stadium – this is totally unrealistic.
15,00 new homes – by when, what type ?

Coe was great athlete but now an older, PR front man trading on the past like some of his clients. He is no friend of Manchester nor Greater Manchester. Maybe he has found his niche in Trafford where they have never wanted to spend much on community benefits.

Regeneration is important. Helping a private football club registered in the Cayman Islands owned by absent billionaires who pay no taxes in the UK is an insult to the public.

Land in trafford park trade between 1.2 and 1.8m so good luck.