Re: Northumberland Development Project
Fair enough, it's their borough and they have every right to ask Spurs to comply with their requests.
There is not a single snowball in hell's chance that we'll do anything of the sort - I imagine Levy will laugh long and hard at that pompous list of demands- but good on them for refusing to compromise a single inch and somehow expecting a massive stadium proect to go up without a single change to the area directly surrounding it. It's the sort of gumption I sometimes think we need in the lobby-filled world of higher politics, to be honest.
Though I would like to point out that we could very well do what victims have been revealed to be doing (buying out homes around the site of their proposed stadium expansion and then leaving them untenanted and decaying to drive down house prices and force the remaining tenants out on the cheap) and screw the area completely, CPOs be damned. Our 'negative' current development approach is streets ahead of some of the less scrupulous ways clubs have gotten what they wanted. So, if I were a member of the Our Tottenham group, I'd be very careful when going around calling the NDP detrimental to the area.
Absolutely.
They have every right to ask.
But they have no right to expect any answer from Spurs other than "fudge off, you delusional ****s".........or slightly more diplomatic words to that effect. If these halfwits must complain or make demands, then they should do so to the relevant authorities - the council, the London Assembly or even central government - not to a fudging football club. Beggars belief.
And their claims about Arsenal are based on sheer ignorance. I mean..............Arsenal contributed £100 million to their local area????? Utter, utter gonads.
Arsenal did, it's true, spend a lot of money building a new waste and recycling plant for Islington...........but only because they bought and demolished Islington's previous waste and recycling plant at Ashburton Grove in order to build their new stadium. If Spurs had needed to buy and demolish a publicly owned facility in order to build their new stadium, then they too would have had to replace the old facility with a new one on a different site. They wouldn't have got it for free any more than Arsenal did. fudge's sake....this isn't rocket science!
Arsenal also built some affordable housing. But only because there was a comparative lack of it in the area. By contrast, it is high quality, private housing stock that is sorely lacking in N17. And let's not forget that, on behalf of Arsenal, Islington served CPO's on a whole raft of small businesses in order to develop property from which the club could make a profit. So it's only right that some of that property developed by Arsenal was affordable housing.
Lastly, perhaps "Our Tottenham" should stop trying to speak on behalf of the "community" when they have zero mandate to do so. The majority of local residents, as far as I'm aware, are broadly in favour of of the NDP and the wider regeneration of Tottenham. Why is it any more "Our Tottenham's" Tottenham than every other resident's Tottenham?