Newcastle's £1.6bn decision: owners fly in to decide St James' Park future

The Guardian

21-02-2025

They are early drafts and were circulated between only a chosen few but senior Newcastle United executives have been scrutinising architects' drawings of both a Plan A and a Plan B.
These currently secret documents relate to a potential redevelopment of St James' Park and the possible construction of a 70,000-capacity stadium in nearby Leazes Park. The consensus is that the former option would take at least five years to complete and the latter a minimum of seven.
If such timelines might disrupt St James' Park's status as a Euro 2028 venue, a new ground could conceivably double match‑day revenue and help the club remain on the right side of Premier League spending rules.
The next step is for Newcastle's owners, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), to scrutinise the blueprints and choose between options A, B and even C. The final one would involve doing nothing structural and merely giving St James' a thorough makeover roughly equivalent to a homeowner opting to install a new kitchen and bathroom but stopping short of an extension.
A Saudi delegation is due to fly into Tyneside from the Middle East to watch Eddie Howe's team in action before hearing the recommendations of UK-based directors amid the seclusion of the Northumberland countryside. Sunday's home match against Nottingham Forest has been pencilled into assorted diaries alongside an alternative date nearer the team's Carabao Cup final against Liverpool in March.
Whenever Newcastle's inscrutable chair, Yasir al-Rumayyan, touches down at Newcastle airport – and his travel plans tend to be kept deliberately opaque – the initial phase of the infrastructure project the club's chief operating officer, Brad Miller, was hired to oversee is clearly reaching its end.
There are suggestions that the Tyneside-based executives, led by Miller, might be leaning towards the new build but conflicting rumours are doing the rounds, with some individuals convinced PIF will look at the costs involved – roughly up to £800m to redevelop Newcastle's city-centre home and almost double that to start from scratch – and opt to concentrate on building a state-of-the-art training ground they have long craved instead.
Although no formal talks with stakeholders have been initiated, let alone planning permission applied for, Populous, the architects responsible for Tottenham's stadium, have drawn up advanced plans for a new weekday HQ. Two sites, one at Woolsington, near Newcastle airport, and the other adjacent to the city's racecourse in Gosforth Park are in contention.
Yet if there are no arguments about the need to replace the club's presently cramped training base in suburban Benton, no one knows whether the Saudis will deem expanding St James' Park from its present capacity of just over 52,000 to 60,000 worth the time and money.
Given that expanding the Gallowgate End of the stadium would entail building over an underground Metro station and that the East Stand backs on to a row of Grade I-listed Georgian terrace houses, redevelopment would be far from straightforward.
Throw in the detail that surrounding roads offer essential access to one of the city's main hospitals, the Royal Victoria Infirmary, and that an apparent 'ransom strip' of land behind the East Stand was bought, mysteriously, for £180,000 by a local businessman last spring, and the complications grow.
Not that a new-build home would be any simpler, even if it was, as has been seriously considered, built partially on the Leazes End area of the St James' Park footprint backing on to Leazes Park. As part of Newcastle's Town Moor – a vast green expanse larger than London's Hyde Park and Hampstead Heath combined where cattle still graze – the park is subject to a conservation order. Indeed, there are very real doubts that planning permission would be granted for construction on the edge of a treasured 'green lung' separating the city centre from the affluent suburbs of Gosforth and Jesmond.
There was talk of another possible stadium site, five miles to the north in Gosforth Park on land owned by the club's minority shareholders, Reuben Brothers, but that appears to have been dismissed in favour of retaining Newcastle's iconic central location, a long goalkick away from shops, restaurants and hotels.
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Back in 1968, the club obtained planning permission for a £1m new stadium in Gosforth Park, to be built along the lines of Rome's Stadio Olimpico. It never happened with some observers convinced the idea was used as leverage to persuade the city council to extend St James' Park's lease to 99 years.
Whatever the precise reason, Newcastle remained in the home originally converted from grazing land for Town Moor cattle when, in 1880, St James' Park was set aside for sporting use by the city's Freemen. It is understood the site still cannot be used for property development.
If that could act as a disincentive to relocation, Miller – a chartered surveyor previously involved with expansion projects at East Midlands, Stansted and Manchester airports – has told the club's nine-person fan-advisory body a new ground could double match-day revenue. In 2022-23 that income stream was worth £37.9m to Newcastle. In contrast, Manchester City made £72m, Arsenal £103m, Tottenham £118m and Manchester United £136m.
Yet although St James' Park is invariably sold out and thousands of fans are regularly disappointed in their quest for tickets, the north-east's demographics suggest there is a limit to the number of expensive corporate boxes Newcastle could sell.
Perhaps significantly, during a fan consultation in 2023 respondents were asked if they would like their match-going experience to be accompanied by, among other luxuries, sushi, prosecco and heated seats. Were executives misreading their audience?
In many ways, a victory for Manchester City in their tussle over associated party transactions with the Premier League could yet provide the Saudis with an easier way of boosting revenue streams.
Moreover, redeveloping St James' Park – and perhaps even building a new arena in Leazes Park – would necessitate a move to a temporary home. With sharing Sunderland's Stadium of Light already ruled out on security grounds and the idea of regular 240-mile round trips to Edinburgh's Murrayfield scotched by Miller, the only feasible alternative is the 90-mile round trip to Middlesbrough's Riverside Stadium.
At a moment when they are believed to be attempting to purchase a 49% stake in Newcastle airport, the Saudis will have much to ponder as they pore over Miller's proposals.
Although their final decision could be made public as early as next month, the debate surrounding the planning process threatens to become almost as heated as that involving Heathrow's third runway.