Quote: mollie "If you look a man city who bought the stadium from the council. It cost them something like 180-200mil and took them approx's 2 years to sort out. This all happened with no opposition as it was not a community stadium but built for the Commonwealth Games with City taking over after the games had finished. I know the kc is nowhere near as big but silly money would need to change hands and then you would have all the building to do on top of that.'"
Man City didn't actually buy the stadium, it was always intended that they would use it after the games, in fact, had they not been a major partner right from the first bid then Manchester would maybe not have secured the games, the delays for City using CMS was the removal of the running track and the addition of the extra rows of seats, it was planned from day one that this would be the case. Interestingly, the CMS is one of a few stadiums in Europe that has official police holding cells built into the fabric of the building.
To "buy" the KC the Allams (or anyone else) would have to pay the market rate, not just of the fabric of the stadium but the surrounding land and access routes, so not only would HCC have to sell the KC, they would also possibly have to sell part of West Park, then what would happen during the fair, would the Allams let the fair "people" use the area, the investment needed to buy the KC and to expand to 40,000 would be in the region of £60-£70m after all associated costs are taken into account, or to put it another way, the Allams would need to invest 3/4 of their personal wealth, said personal wealth isn't in bundles of £50's in a vault somewhere, it's on a ledger somewhere.