If I get a chance tomorrow I'll try and work out how to post the plan on here, hopefully someone more tech savvy than me does it first.

Where are the plans?

Endless supply of miniature pencils.

Also discounted swedish meatballs , much better than the Dried up precooked Hot dogs at the stadium.

On the Salford council web site. Refer to my first post and use the planning reference number. You will need to do it on a PC or laptop.

Or the thousands of people who daily make a trip to an IKEA and see a stadium they didn't know existed? Or the family's who can browse before/after a game? Pencils are obviously the big draw!

You forgot mini Diam bars and paper tape measures!!!

That's my point !
It will improve the appearance certainly but,of course,they'll be able the police the car park so it won't be available for matchday parking.
By causing the stadium to be built we've started the development which will be good news for the owners of the site,and massively increased its value.
Overall,I'll be pleased if the site does become easier on the eye,and fully developed, but I fear that we'll be at the back of the queue when it comes to consideration.

If the new road does not provide adequate relief, it’s a knocking bet.



If this is Ikea and the development does happen, then in retrospect you would have to have more sympathy for John Wilkinson and the gang for how things panned out. I remember on a couple of occasions Wilky saying that Ikea was essentially the golden nugget of the stadium’s retail plan with the rental yield from them alone being able to finance much of the ongoing operations. However, that’s a mute point now.

On a different note, I wonder if this is part of the Council’s exit strategy from the JV?

Why would the fact that Peel are building a road and bridge to service their development site, including your stadium and now possibly accommodating IKEA, mean that anyone should have "more sympathy for John Wilkinson and the gang"?

Rather than IKEA being the nugget of the stadium's retail plan, surely it is more accurate to consider the stadium as the key for unlocking the 'IKEA' retail plan, or is that what you mean and how do you think that this possibly signals the Council's exit strategy?

There’s two different things here.

Traffic going in and out of the stadium is an existing issue for Salford and Sale supporters. The hope is that the new road might alleviate some of it. (I don’t know whether this would be the case but it’s a sentiment held by some people.) If an Ikea comes along, you would imagine this to attract additional traffic and this to offset any alleviation potential, particularly on a Sunday afternoon. Which, therefore, may force the Club’s hand to move regular home fixtures back to Friday night. So that’s one thing.

The other thing regards the belated arrival of an Ikea. Now lets go back ten years to fifteen years. There were quite a few potential income streams for the stadium complex that came and went – bearing in mind that as Salford fans, we’re blinkered, and all we were bothered about is money flowing into the development to underpin the Club’s finances, enabling it to spend up to the salary cap without the need of a sugar daddy owner. That was the original plan. The original plan sold to Salford supporters.

These included a hotel, a ‘rlsupercasinorl’ (kiboshed not least because Salford wasn’t shortlisted, and the Government pulled the plug on them anyway), and a retail park specialising in white goods. (And how could we forget the rlwater parkrl!). Some form of retail was probably most likely, not least because it is a well-worn path.

Then Red City Developments goes bust in 2008. The project as we were sold was essentially dead at that point. Peel, who had originally opposed the development, end up salvaging the new stadium by offering a scaled down, off-the-shelf jobby. Now whether Salford were too far down the line to turn back to The Wiilows, I don’t know, but they opted to continue towards the move.

When the Club were in serious trouble at the end of 2013, John Wilkinson mentioned that Ikea had been the frontrunners to build a store on the complex. He intimated that recessionary factors halted this, as well as having devastating consequences for his own business and finances, and in turn the Club’s; and had this Ikea been built, Salford would not be in the desperate situation they are in at present – having very few income streams from the stadium and paying a high rent (or supposed to be) to a stadium management company.

Now you will get varying responses on here towards John Wilkinson’s tenure at the Club. You could say Salford overreached in the original stadium projectses money left, right and centre, and the Council is owed circa £20m in loans to it. So it’s a bit of a political hot potato around these parts. Rumour had it that they rebuffed Koukash’s advances to negotiate an equity stake in it. Koukash has fired a few barbed words towards their direction since. So maybe… perhaps… the Ikea development has been on the cards for sometime and it is money derived from the new store that will help satisfy the Council’s continued financial interest in the JV, until which point it is satisfied.

Long-winded as it is, this is the second point I was trying to make.

And you make it really well.
The recession hit and cost JW perhaps more than we'll ever know.
Salford Council will eventually come out of this ok because of the increased land values,unless Peel have taken all the upside and left them only downside.

Thanks for the response. I think that you may be right alluding to the fact that IKEA from a traffic POV might have a detrimental effect despite the new link road and bridge to the Trafford Centre I wouldn't dare to suggest a best time to play to avoid it, particularly during early trading when people are giddy, so good luck and hopefully not back to square one. In the longer term if the route connects further along the A57 it might provide two additional access egress points away from the stadium

I'm not sure of the legal nature of the JV but the planning application is by Peel, do the Council have an interest which might ease the current plight of the stadium finances, or is there a kick back through a S106 as development proceeds? Hardly likely to cover the Council's position I'd have thought, apart from saving face.

From the outside, I always felt a bit sorry for John Wilkinson as it seemed that his heart was in the right place, perhaps too much so and whether it was the recession or not, I don't get the impression that he had the wherewithal to see the grand plan through and that was my point really. I think that the stadium ended up as a sop to pave the way the comprehensive nature of the overall development that Peel wanted from Peel Green to Irlam rather than it being the centre piece to drive inward investment.

You would hope that the Council get what's due to them and in turn so do the good burghers of Salford. TBF that new road and bridge will not have come cheap particularly the cost in delay whilst the structure is sorted out and the same goes presumably for the Port Salford and all the messing about with the Barton Stretch.

They are a property development company as we know so they'd expect an upside somewhere

I'd like to comment on Peel's arrangements and relationships with local authorities. I cannot do that on here. However to get a flavour of the hold this company has on the area: the enlarged wind farm in the Rochdale/Bury/Blackburn area meant the local authorities had to invest to allow planning hearings: paid for by Peel. (From the horse's mouth).