If I were Chalmers I'd be publicly posturing to walk away leaving the RFL with a massive white elephant on their hands, and privately offering them a much, much reduced sum to take the whole thing off their hands - once he has the keys to the castle, he can secure long term funding against the lease and invite his own developers in to help stop the rot.

Smart guy our chairman

Which is why Carter & Hudgell were both sticking their oars in earlier in the year and telling the RFL to get full value for the lease.

Forgot about the rates bit. I was suggesting that the RFL must have had a fair chunk of their pound of flesh from the rent we have been paying them.

if the £72k pa rental figure that is often quoted is true they've received £370k over the 5 years the lease with them has been in place. Given they were rumoured to have paid between £800k and £1m for the lease they've not really done well out of the deal have they?

Have we always paid this amount? Something is nagging me to say that we used to pay more, but I could be wrong.

January 2012 Rfl paid £1.5m (£1.25m for Bulls, £250k was the 20%VAT to send to HMRC) for the Odsal lease. Bulls already had £900k secret unsecured loan with RFL which was beginning to have awkward questions asked of the RFL. So the RFL (unexpectedly according to Hood) redeemed their loan, took the last asset of a member club in financial distress and handed over £600k, of which £250k needed to be given to HMRC.

And the dominoes continued to fall.

IIRC Parkin was the guy Caisley was looking to bring onboard as an investor at time Hood sold lease.

Is Parkin interested in Philanthropy?

Nobody else n the right mind would have invest in us hoping to see a return of cash would they?

rumour at time was he was more interested in Odsal site than the rugby. He has a massive logistics company which was looking for sites close to motorways and I seem to remember there's a possibility of a link road into the back of the Odsal site from the Euroway junction of 606. Given it can't be used for housing due to the unknown nasties in the ground underneath some form of light industrial/commercial re-development is one of few schemes that actually make sense.

The RFL bought the stadium off the then-Bulls at the very start of 2012. So the RFL should have had over 7 1/2 years rent so far.
Rent at £72k (which WAS the rent from the start). And that the total cost to the RFL incl fees and stamp duty was £1.336m. Through a combination of routine amortisation of the cost and then a BIG write down at the end of 2017, it now stands in the RFL Accounts as an asset valued at £750k.

If the RFL walked away or for any other reason the lease reverted to the Council, the RFL would take a £750k hit. And that (and this is pretty crucial IMO) on 25/5/18 the RFL pledged its main assets- assumed to include Odsal, although you can't tell from the filed charge document - as security for borrowings.
Effectively mortgaged? In which case, they may be in deep if they try and dispose of it for less than Book Value! It has been restated as an "investment property" in the accounts, meaning its purpose now is to either earn rental income or to be held and then sold hopefully at a profit. As opposed to it being treated same as e.g. Red Halla as it used to be - i.e. an asset for use in the business.

Is the answer not as simple as moving to Guiseley, flogging Odsal to Parkin for his trucks and using the proceeds towards a new facility?