Inside the office of Tom Cartledge, Nottingham Forest’s chairman, there is a collection of closely guarded designs showing how, one day, he sees the new-look City Ground. He calls it the “master plan” and, for those aware of the long and complex history, it is the first glimpse into a brave new world.
That is said with a measure of restraint when, even now, there are still obstacles to negotiate. It is one of the reasons why Evangelos Marinakis, the club’s owner, appointed Cartledge in August: to navigate through the issues, to help create something exciting and long-lasting and, ultimately, change the skyline on their stretch of the River Trent.
Take a walk across Trent Bridge and, if you look across the water, you will see that work is underway. One of the vertical floodlights, a fixture here for decades, was taken down this week in anticipation of planning approval to put up a new “corner box” of executive suites. The structure is built from shipping containers and takes its inspiration from Stadium 974 in Qatar at the World Cup. Another is going up on the opposite side of the Trent End and, if everything goes to plan, both will open before the end of the season.
But there are bigger projects underway that, unreported until now, would dramatically enhance the stadium that has been Forest’s home for 125 years and, so Marinakis hopes, bring immense benefits for Nottingham as a whole.
That plan will involve:
- Increasing the stadium’s capacity to 40,000 from its current level of 29,550.
- Extending the Bridgford Stand by another 5,000 seats, to go with replacing the Peter Taylor Stand with a two-tier, 10,000-seat replacement.
- Building a new, state-of-the-art training ground, with an announcement expected soon about location.
- Opening a museum in the bowels of the Trent End.
- Extending the current lease with Nottingham City Council, which owns the land the stadium sits on, or potentially buying the freehold.
Uppermost in Forest’s mind is finding a way to accommodate the thousands of fans who cannot get tickets for matches – the club’s data suggests they could have sold 50,000 tickets for a number of games since their return to the Premier League – and that, by developing the stadium, the club will generate huge streams of new revenue.
That extra income will, in turn, help Marinakis to continue putting significant amounts of money into the team at a time when the owner’s ambitions have to be aligned with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability (P&S) rules.
An artist’s impression of a new ‘corner box’ between the Trent End and Brian Clough Stand at the City Ground (Courtesy of Nottingham Forest and Benoy)
“He wants to invest in the city of Nottingham,” says Cartledge. “He doesn’t want the club to be held back and, in the modern sport, one of the best ways to ensure we are sustainable is to invest in the asset.”
While Forest have talked internally about the pros and cons of building a new stadium, that is merely because the sensible approach for any club in their position is to debate every option. Marinakis is very clear he wants to stay at the City Ground. He has given the green light to finance the redevelopment and Forest would already have submitted the planning application for the Bridgford Stand but for an ongoing issue with the lease/freehold.
“If the city council gives us the nod, he (Marinakis) wants me to get on with everything straight away,” says Cartledge. “The owner’s appetite hasn’t stopped. He is trying to spend, where appropriate, to improve the fan experience and increase the capacity. We can read into that he wants to stay here.”
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So what exactly is the issue with the council? And why is it also preventing Forest from sending in the bulldozers, as they had hoped, to start dismantling the Peter Taylor Stand this summer?
It certainly needs some form of explanation given that the former chairman, Nicholas Randall, announced in 2019 that the club had been granted a new 250-year-lease. Randall said he was “delighted” to secure the future of the club’s home ground.
In fact, the agreement was never completed. Forest have been operating, as before, with a 50-year lease agreement from 2011 and, before starting a redevelopment of this magnitude, the club need the securities and insurance of knowing the council will not, at some point, come up with alternative plans for what is a prime riverside location. As it stands, there is no such guarantee, even though the ground was added to the community asset register following an application by the club’s supporters’ trust in 2017.
The City Ground’s four stands (clockwise from bottom left): the Trent End, Brian Clough Stand, Bridgford Stand, Peter Taylor Stand (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
It is, to say the least, complicated. In November, the council issued a Section 114 notice, declaring itself, in effect, bankrupt and meaning they will have to make all sorts of cuts to services across the city. The government is proposing to send in commissioners to take control and, even before that point, everything with Forest had come to a standstill, to their intense frustration.
The club currently pay an annual lease of £250,000 a year and have tried on a number of occasions to renegotiate a longer agreement. That process has accelerated since Cartledge was made chairman. However, it is understood the council is asking, as one option, for the annual rent to be almost quadrupled.
When it comes to the freehold, the council values the land as potentially a future residential area. Therefore, the figures quoted are dramatically higher than would ordinarily be expected – and, for Forest, unviable. It has reached an impasse and, with the council in a state of financial crisis, there is no indication when that position might change.
The worst-case scenario for Forest is that the delays will be considerable and the issue remains unresolved for a long time. If so, it is feasible the club may have to rethink everything. And, yes, that would involve looking more closely at exploring Plan B: the idea of an entirely new stadium, perhaps further out of the city.
That, to be clear, is not Forest’s preferred option. Nor would it make any sense for the council when its own leader, David Mellen, has previously talked about the City Ground redevelopment helping, as part of the wider Nottingham Southside regeneration, to bring “thousands more jobs, millions more visitors and economic growth for the benefit of the entire city.”
“I don’t think there has ever been a project in this city, across all its assets, where somebody is prepared to put in between £100million and £200m, as our owner is for both the Peter Taylor Stand and the Bridgford Stand,” says Cartledge. “It will create a huge number of jobs. Hotel rooms will be full, restaurants will be full. The benefits for the city will be huge.”
This is Cartledge’s area of expertise given that he is the chief executive of Handley House Group, the parent company for four international businesses specialising in design and architecture. One of those is Benoy, which has designed the stadium plans. Cartledge is a long-term Forest fan who understands the club are at a disadvantage, financially, compared to most Premier League clubs because the City Ground brings in little revenue outside matchdays.
Changes to P&S rules make it even more imperative for clubs to increase their non-football revenue and, with that in mind, Forest are keen to make the stadium a hive of lucrative activity, seven days a week. The proposed Peter Taylor Stand includes conference and banqueting suites that would be available to hire. The stadium will host a Take That concert this summer and that kind of event would, in theory, become the norm outside the football season.
The Peter Taylor Stand (in background) is the first earmarked for redevelopment at the City Ground (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
“For the football club to be competitive, infrastructure of the stadium is now one of the critical things,” explains Cartledge. “Look at the success of Arsenal, Spurs, Manchester City, Manchester United and a few others and it is very often the revenue from off-field activities that is allowing these clubs to dominate.
“Look at the success of Manchester on the back of its football clubs. Manchester has revolutionised itself and a big part of that is because they have two global brands operating in the city, with all the wealth that brings. There is no reason why we can’t do the same here in Nottingham.”
To Marinakis, the idea of a new training ground has been part of his thinking since the Greek shipping magnate bought the club from Fawaz al-Hasawi in the summer of 2017.
All sorts of improvements have been made to upgrade the current training ground in West Bridgford, a mile or so from Forest’s stadium. The ground-floor space has been doubled. New buildings have gone up, pitches have been replaced, facilities upgraded.
Always, though, the Forest hierarchy have been acutely aware they did not have the land to create what they wanted: a purpose-built site that could accommodate the men’s, women’s and academy teams without being hemmed in by housing.
Forest’s current training ground falls a long way short of the facilities at Olympiacos, Marinakis’ Greek club. Closer to home, Leicester City’s training base, which opened in 2020 not far from the Nottinghamshire border, is another reminder that Forest have fallen behind.
Evangelos Marinakis has big plans for Forest (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
“There is a recognition that our existing facilities are too small and incapable of accommodating, as one, the women’s team, the academy and what the Premier League expectations are for the first team,” says Cartledge.
That has led to Forest looking at a number of potential sites and in the coming weeks the club hope to be in a position to make an official announcement. As soon as that happens, the planning processes will begin.
“A piece of land has been identified, which will accommodate everyone and help us attract talent, not just at first-team level,” says Cartledge. “Kids will be coming to a place that is ambitious and has all the best facilities. It’s another ambition of the ownership: to treat the players and the future talent of the club in the best possible way.”
Ideally, Marinakis would like to have the training ground, the two new stands and everything else up and running at various points between now and the end of 2027. Work on the Peter Taylor Stand would take roughly 18 months, though it is expected the lower tier would be operational much earlier.
In the meantime, changes will continue at the stadium Cartledge describes as “our romantic home.” Workmen are clearing space for the corner boxes, which will each have 18 executive suites, creating space for another 360 spectators. The development will cost in the region of £5million and, in the coming years, Forest will look again at the corner of the Trent End and the Brian Clough Stand. Do they keep the corner structure on that side? Or will they be even more ambitious?
“If we really want to find a few more seats, we look at how we connect the two stands,” says Cartledge.
An artist’s impression of one of Forest’s proposed new ‘corner boxes’ (Courtesy of Nottingham Forest and Benoy)
Other changes are already evident. Work on the museum project started soon after Cartledge’s appointment and the club are close to announcing its launch. When open, it will form part of stadium tours. Another club shop will open as part of the same development.
Forest’s intention is to solar-panel the roof of the Brian Clough Stand to generate their own power for matchdays. A fan zone opened earlier this season and there have been other cosmetic changes inside a stadium that, in the words of former manager Steve Cooper, “oozes football soul.”
At the same time, Forest acknowledge it is five years since the plans for the Peter Taylor Stand were announced and that, at the time, the club let it be known they anticipated the work starting at the end of the 2019-2020 season.
The delays have been considerable. The planning process involved dealing with three councils and maybe, on reflection, there were people at the club who did not fully appreciate the huge complexities of a case that, at the last count, had 1,858 documents and 2,556 comments attached to the planning application.
Forest have had to sign off all sorts of financial deals, known as S106 agreements, to pay for everything from new bus stops and cycle routes to a park-and-ride scheme and road-safety improvements, as well as provisionally arranging for the adjacent boat club to be relocated a short distance along the river.
There have been archaeological surveys, checks for Japanese knotweed and wildlife experts monitoring whether there were bats or birds of prey using the stadium. Add in the COVID-19 pandemic and objections from local residents and … well, it hasn’t been straightforward getting to a position, as of this week, when the last pieces of paperwork are finally being signed off.
“The whole process has been a bit more sluggish than expected,” says Cartledge. “I’ve seen fans saying, ‘These are all false promises, it will never happen.’ But that’s not correct. The owner has always said, ‘Get these things done’. I was brought in partly to unlock the problem.”
The stadium designs make it clear why it would be well worth the wait. The new-look City Ground really is a thing of beauty. And if you are wondering why Forest are buying the former Hart’s restaurant in central Nottingham, it is not just to recreate a “high quality” dining experience but also to turn three floors into club offices.
Why do Forest need more office space? Because their plans involve building a 19-storey apartment block on what is currently the club’s shop and main offices, opposite the stadium. The apartments will go up after the Peter Taylor Stand and the layout of a pedestrianised plaza means Forest have had to sacrifice plans to create what would have been known as the Miracle Gates, commemorating their European Cup-winning teams from 1979 and 1980.
The proposed Peter Taylor Stand, revealed in 2019 (Photo courtesy of Nottingham Forest and Benoy)
The emphasis, it seems, is to look to the future rather than the past. And nor is this master plan dependent on Nuno Espirito Santo’s team remaining in the Premier League. Forest are currently 16th but, alongside 18th-placed Everton, facing the possibility of a points deduction for breaching P&S rules.
Forest intend to press ahead even if they drop back into the Championship. They were getting bigger crowds in their promotion season than some games, under Clough, when they were back-to-back European Cup winners. Plus there is evidence that it is only the logistics of the City Ground that has prevented the club from breaking their attendance record – set in October 1967 with a crowd of 49,946 against Manchester United – since returning to the top division.
When Forest played in front of a sell-out crowd at home to Blackpool in the FA Cup last month, 21,500 tickets were bought by fans without season tickets. And that, to put it into context, was against a team from League One.
Cartledge is very clear: “If you add up our 20,000 season-ticket holders, plus the 21,500 or more who were waiting in a queue for tickets, the city of Nottingham should be able to sustain a 45,000 to 50,000-seat stadium. We can get ourselves to 40,000 and, if there was no obstruction, he (Marinakis) would get on it next season. He just wants to get going with it and that’s very exciting.”
(Top photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images)
