All things Dundee FC

[Tibbermoresaint]

4 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

  Yeah, let's spend millions of pounds building a football stadium then demolish it and build something else.  Let's not even take in to consideration the planning consents!

 

You're saying that no-one has ever built a building, demolished it and built something else? 

Really?

[lionel hutz]

Re: Cost of the stadium,, looking at what other clubs have spent on similiar-sized stadiums

Viking Stravanger spent €20m on their 16,000 capacity stadium in 2004 (€28.2m when inflation adjusted)
Molde spent £16.75m on their 12,000 capacity stadium in 1998 (£27.1m when inflation adjusted)
IF Elfsborg spent £8m on their 16,000 capacity stadium in 2003 (£11.2m in today's money)
Bristol Rovers' new 21,000 seater ground is going to cost £40m

Either way, there's no chance that this will cost any less than £20m

[Granny Danger]

2 minutes ago, Marr1 said:

Re: Cost of the stadium,, looking at what other clubs have spent on similiar-sized stadiums

Viking Stravanger spent €20m on their 16,000 capacity stadium in 2004 (€28.2m when inflation adjusted)
Molde spent £16.75m on their 12,000 capacity stadium in 1998 (£27.1m when inflation adjusted)
IF Elfsborg spent £8m on their 16,000 capacity stadium in 2003 (£11.2m in today's money)
Bristol Rovers' new 21,000 seater ground is going to cost £40m

Either way, there's no chance that this will cost any less than £20m

Have any of them subsequently knocked them down and built something else?

Asking for a friend deluded Saintee.

[Tibbermoresaint]

Rotherham's ground cost £20m for 12,000 seats. It opened in 2012.

[Swello]

13 minutes ago, Marr1 said:

Re: Cost of the stadium,, looking at what other clubs have spent on similiar-sized stadiums

Viking Stravanger spent €20m on their 16,000 capacity stadium in 2004 (€28.2m when inflation adjusted)
Molde spent £16.75m on their 12,000 capacity stadium in 1998 (£27.1m when inflation adjusted)
IF Elfsborg spent £8m on their 16,000 capacity stadium in 2003 (£11.2m in today's money)
Bristol Rovers' new 21,000 seater ground is going to cost £40m

Either way, there's no chance that this will cost any less than £20m

Genuine question - are any of those the four-box cheap as possible breeze block specials that we excel at in Scotland? I would guess that a lot of those stadiums are relatively high spec....

ETA - to answer my own question, I looked at the Molde one at random - doesn't look like a Barr to me....

Edited August 22, 2017 by Swello

[PauloPerth]

27 minutes ago, harry94 said:

The difference is though that Coventry had the rugby side sharing with them and they were regularly producing considerable income which meant that the holding company could be more stubborn and push a harder deal. There aren't really any other uses of a stadium that is so regular in this part of the world so if the owners of the facility do end up being driven for profit, they could lose a massive amount of money if they engineered a situation in which Dundee were lost. United getting involved and moving in at the same time could be an issue as that then does reduce the dependence on Dundee in the long term.

I doubt we'll see them but I'd really like to see what contracts will be signed between Dundee and the stadium holders. Ideally, if the Americans were allowing us to pay minimal rent for x years, I'd like the club to put money aside each year to buy shares of the holding company so after a certain amount of time, we co have a certain defence against the sort of issue you point out.

All fair points. I think there would definitely be merit in long term planning and investment in the future of the club. Though, knowing Scottish football and the way it's run, all the extra cash would probably go into the here and now (the squad!).

I'm of the same opinion as I am about the Aberdeen new stadium to be honest. Its a big change and is something exciting for a few seasons, but what does it do for the club in 10/ 20 years? Who knows.  If there is absolutely no other option then fair enough, but I'm not convinced for either club that's the case.

I think for owners it's an easy option as they only see the figures and the large increase in revenue.  It just feels like it's all too easy to rip away big parts of Scottish football heritage as a short term fix.

[K.T]

Viking Stravanger spent €20m on their 16,000 capacity stadium in 2004 (€28.2m when inflation adjusted)

That is a magnificent wee ground. They hold conferences and concerts there as well. I hope we get a ground like that. It's even dark blue.

[johnnydun]

Am I in the right thread?

[harry94]

2 hours ago, PauloPerth said:

All fair points. I think there would definitely be merit in long term planning and investment in the future of the club. Though, knowing Scottish football and the way it's run, all the extra cash would probably go into the here and now (the squad!).

I'm of the same opinion as I am about the Aberdeen new stadium to be honest. Its a big change and is something exciting for a few seasons, but what does it do for the club in 10/ 20 years? Who knows.  If there is absolutely no other option then fair enough, but I'm not convinced for either club that's the case.

I think for owners it's an easy option as they only see the figures and the large increase in revenue.  It just feels like it's all too easy to rip away big parts of Scottish football heritage as a short term fix.

The issue is I think that whatever happens, money is always going to be an issue.

The Keyes family who own Dundee and would be the main financiers behind this project keep a low profile but tracking their activities does show that they have considerable wealth. Tracking James Keyes and the growth of his business, Johnson Controls, would suggest that they have a fair amount of cash. Their US activities now focus on property and they're heavily invested in a few companies that look pretty successful. If I had to guess, I'd say that they are probably ranked somewhere near the top if you were to compile a Scottish Football rich owners list.

Now that's great but it doesn't mean the money is ours. We're in a situation where we've got no assets and we've been seeing a deficit in the running of the club each season. They've plugged gaps and supported our managers with good budgets but if they were to walk away, we'd have to really cut our cloth and have no overdraft facility.

We could come up with a plan that could maybe rejuvenate and buyback Dens in some way along with some modest training facility developments with the council and we could somehow cost that out to be half the price of the proposed Camperdown project. The issue is though that the Americans genuinely have the money and can finance this plan right now while the club running a deficit and, like most of the league, always threatened with a relegation don't have a hope in hell of finding the funding required for an alternative option. They are the only access to a chequebook and that requires doing things their way.

From their side of things, it doesn't make sense to buy a crumbling 118 year old stadium on a flawed site and then fix the training ground issue separately. There is a significant housing development project planned on the new plot of land as well as the talk of the other income generating facilities and their experience with land acquisition and working with developers, they obviously fancy their chances to create a long term income facility for the family.

If this plan doesn't go ahead, I fear we'll end up losing Dens anyway in the future but with a huge amount of pain and suffering in terms of the operations of the club. If it does, there's a chance we can get it right. I think prospects for the potential development of Dens ended almost ten years ago when stadium ownership was added as an additional hurdle. Before that, we may have just been able to cobble together some sort of plan (maybe with the south side land) but after that, I don't think we could independently raise all the finances needed or show to someone external that it's a viable business plan.

Edited August 22, 2017 by harry94
Bad Englishing

[locheedee]

55 minutes ago, johnnydun said:

Am I in the right thread?

Come on manny, you know if its full of dabs n fermers gibbering shite then its going to be the Dundee thread!

[DigOutYourSoul]

If we're talking about something along the lines of Vikings stadium then we'd be in for a treat. It's a great looking stadium.

I'm excited about it as I'm not originally from the city and don't have the emotional ties to Dens that others who's fathers and grandfathers have attended games do. I guess I then see if from a purely practical perspective, where it makes sense.

The Americans are clever guys, I've met Nelms a few times now and he's very switched on so I highly doubt they'd be going ahead with this if they didn't see potential benefits in the long run. The current lease agreement seems strange to me where dundee not only pay rent but also seem to be liable for capital upkeep of he property. So moving away from that where the club purely pay a rental fee would be a benefit itself.

There are a lot of questions longer term, as have rightly been pointed out, but I'm quite looking forward to a new stadium in a few years time.

[stu2910]

The difference is though that Coventry had the rugby side sharing with them and they were regularly producing considerable income which meant that the holding company could be more stubborn and push a harder deal. There aren't really any other uses of a stadium that is so regular in this part of the world so if the owners of the facility do end up being driven for profit, they could lose a massive amount of money if they engineered a situation in which Dundee were lost. United getting involved and moving in at the same time could be an issue as that then does reduce the dependence on Dundee in the long term.

I doubt we'll see them but I'd really like to see what contracts will be signed between Dundee and the stadium holders. Ideally, if the Americans were allowing us to pay minimal rent for x years, I'd like the club to put money aside each year to buy shares of the holding company so after a certain amount of time, we co have a certain defence against the sort of issue you point out.

 

I read in one of the interviews with Nelms that this has been set up in this way, with the separate company buying the land etc, because funnily enough Dundee FC isn't a particularly attractive name to lenders.

 

Suggests to me that it's been done like this purely to get it built and that the long term plan would be to work it back into the club's ownership. The owners main objective when they took over was to build the club back up with the stadium, training facilities, youth academy etc being worth significantly more combined than the club cost them at the time and therefore worth selling.

[harry94]

4 minutes ago, G_Man1985 said:

The Americans are clever guys, didn't they sell Hemmings and Stewart for about a fiver each. Crazy bit of business that was.

The best bit of business they have done was appoint mccann who saved us.
 

Hemmings was attracted here with the addition of a release clause (he had no intention of staying in Scotland apart from the short term) and Stewart was wanting away with a year of his deal left. I'm not sure what you wanted them to do.

[Ludo*1]

 
The amount we got for them was ridiculous. We also know plenty players sign long contracts even though they have no intention of staying so the club they were at usually get an even better fee for them.
That wasn't business. That was day light robbery.
 
Do I believe the owners have the best interests in our club? No I don't.
 

You're basing your belief in the owners not have the best interest for our club due to 2 poor pieces of transfer business which was arguably not fully in their control? I'm not in favour of moving stadium either but that's a bizarre bit of logic.

[DigOutYourSoul]

 
The amount we got for them was ridiculous. We also know plenty players sign long contracts even though they have no intention of staying so the club they were at usually get an even better fee for them.
That wasn't business. That was day light robbery.
 
Do I believe the owners have the best interests in our club? No I don't.
 

You've become really, really angry recently.

[Ludo*1]

In other news - Scot Gardiner is getting the bullet from Hearts because he's apparently the responsible one for the delays in Hearts getting their new stand open on time as he didn't order new seats in time.

 

Pretty much the exact same reason he was punted from us as he didn't have a sponsor in place.

 

 

[an-dee]

1 hour ago, G_Man1985 said:

 

2 bits of transfer business we have had in a long time. When was last time before them we have made a good amount of money on a player. 2 of the best players in the league and we get very little.

Like every team we are a selling club and we have maybe Kerr who is worth something. Business from selling players won't happen.

Season ticket prices ( yes I got one ) are pricing people out of getting one. Attendances are pretty poor on a whole already never mind getting a 15 thousand seated stadium.

The youth set up must be shite as we have very little coming through.

 

 

We've had Kerr, Wighton and now Waddell coming through in the past few years. Also Curran, Gourlay and Ferrie have all been in and around the squad before. We've also had more young players out on loan recently than I can remember in a long time. We've definitely been better recently in terms of bringing players through IMO. 

[Ludo*1]

There's a Celtic fan on Twitter saying he seen a guy in a Barcelona tracksuit going into Dens. He then proceeded to say it's Oscar Mingueza who's an 18 year old centre back. Seems a lot of nonsense but bit random.

[Bigmouth Strikes Again]

49 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

There's a Celtic fan on Twitter saying he seen a guy in a Barcelona tracksuit going into Dens. He then proceeded to say it's Oscar Mingueza who's an 18 year old centre back. Seems a lot of nonsense but bit random.

[AnAnInginAneAnA]

53 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

There's a Celtic fan on Twitter saying he seen a guy in a Barcelona tracksuit going into Dens. He then proceeded to say it's Oscar Mingueza who's an 18 year old centre back. Seems a lot of nonsense but bit random.

A mate of mines who lives on Sandeman street also texted me earlier to say that he saw a young lad in barca trackies and a guy in a suit speaking spanish to each other outside Dens this afternoon. I originally thought he was just talking the piss as that's his style, but maybe there might be something to it...