Dream for stadium site that became a nightmare

News that Sheffield Council was to close and demolish the stadium where Olympic champion heptathlete Jessica Ennis trains sparked shock around the world and the decision was hotly debated.

Some agreed the stadium was a white elephant, while others angrily said it should be saved and named in honour of Ennis’s achievements. Most predicted a bleak future for the site.

But yesterday it was revealed a new plan was already fully formed to reinvent the site once again, with a new stadium rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of the £29m failure built in 1991.

The scheme has been drawn up by former Sheffield Central MP and Sports Minister Richard Caborn, who yesterday presented his ambitious £40m plan to a packed press conference.

Mr Caborn admitted the figures had been written up on “the back of a fag packet” and stressed his drawings were “only an idea” at present, but said the new venture had major backing.

The plan is to knock down the old stadium and build a new one, which would be capable of hosting more sports and would become a permanent home for both the city’s rugby clubs.

But more exciting, Mr Caborn said, was an Advanced Sports and Wellbeing Park, in the mould of South Yorkshire’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre between Sheffield and Rotherham. He said the project would be the “biggest Olympic legacy site outside London” and added: “This is the result of intensive work by a small group of significant organisations in the Sheffield City Region.

“It has the potential to build even further the sports, leisure and related wellness sector embracing and advancing a range of partners that will have a real impact on sporting performance.”

Mr Caborn said work at the new Don Valley would allow the experiences of elite sportsmen and women to inform new technologies which could then be manufactured in the region, creating wealth.

It was suggested that the scheme could create up to 940 jobs, and Mr Caborn said he hoped the new facilites would open in 2015, but it remained unclear where funding would come from.

Sheffield Council’s leader Julie Dore again blamed Government cuts for the closure of Don Valley Stadium, which costs the authority £700,000 a year to run.

She said she had approached Mr Caborn to “take the lead” on the site and added: “Who better placed than a former sport and trade minister to take this on?”

Both Mr Caborn and Coun Dore rejected suggestions yesterday’s announcement had been deliberately delayed to allow negative headlines about the stadium’s closure to embarrass the Government.

Coun Dore said the Caborn plan had only come to fruition following a meeting last Friday, a week after the closure decision, and yesterday was the earliest opportunity to go public.

But Coun Shaffaq Mohammed, leader of Sheffield Council’s Liberal Democrat group, said that while he welcomed new ideas, he was sceptical about how the unveiling had been handled.

He added: “Given the council leader knew about this plan all along, you have to wonder why it hasn’t been mentioned once during the unwelcome, negative publicity Sheffield has received. A lot of hard work to promote Sheffield as a premier place to invest in has been undermined.”

Speaking in Parliament yesterday in a debate on the future of sport in the city, Sheffield Central MP Paul Blomfield said the Coalition’s austerity drive was to blame for closure of Don Valley.

He accused the Government of “crying crocodile tears” over the closure and called on Ministers to now show “practical support” for the council’s new plan for the site.

Sheffield South East MP Clive Betts suggested funding could be offered from the Regional Growth Fund. “(The Government) should look at the regional growth fund and other potential sources, and recognise that this is a real opportunity for the council to take the area forward,” he said.

Meanwhile Jessica Ennis yesterday insisted she has no intention of switching from her coach Toni Minichiello, indicating she is willing to provide him with financial support “if that is what it comes down to”. Minichiello, who guided Ennis to gold at London 2012, has lost his job as an Olympic coach, becoming a high-profile casualty of UK Athletics’ restructuring plan around a single High Performance Institute in Loughborough. Ennis wants to keep training in Sheffield.