Hall Green Stadium Battle

[brianbuck]

Hall Green Greyhound Stadium on the south side of Birmingham, is under serious threat from sport's biggest enemies - the Property Developers, who have submitted a planning application to Birmingham City Council to demolish the stadium and build 200 houses on the site. The application is due to be considered by the City's Planning Committee on May 26th/27th.

 

Should we be concerned at the possible loss of a venue which has not staged speedway for the last 78 years? Yes we should! Hall Green is a stadium with superb facilities which include a restaurant, bars, a snooker club, and a 48 bedroom fully equipped hotel. It is probably the most profitable greyhound stadium in the country, attracting over half a million patrons a year, and it provides employment for over 200 people. It is clearly an outstanding community asset and the only possible reason why the landowners (NOT the GRA who are only the leaseholders and who do NOT want the stadium to be lost), is short-term financial greed.

 

Birmingham Speedway promoter Tony Mole is supporting the group fighting to oppose the loss of Hall Green, and with the co-operation of the stadium manager Chris Black and the GRA, is shortly planning to place a wall plaque in the stadium lounge to commemorate the fact that the venue was the home of Birmingham Speedway from 1928 until 1938. (Although the old speedway circuit has long been grassed over, its outline can still be seen on a photograph shown on the stadium website). This will hopefully, provide some much needed media publicity which could help with the fight.

 

Speedway enthusiasts everywhere can also help by E-Mailing Birmingham City Council's planning office and expressing their opposition to the demolition proposals. E-Mails should be addressed to PLANNINGANDREGENERATIONENQUIRIES@BIRMINGHAM.GOV and it is essential that the application reference which is 2016/01219PA is quoted plus your full name and address. There is no need to go chapter and verse into the reasons although it would be helpful to try and emphasise why the application should be rejected - it will be sufficient just to express your opposition to the plan being passed.

 

The more people who are prepared to do this, the greater the possibility of getting the stadium declared a Community Asset. Given the fact that Hall Green Stadium is sited bang in the middle of a good class residential district, the possibility of speedway ever being seen there again in the future is extremely remote, but even so, it beholds us to support the efforts to save another of our leisure facilities which is under threat - and we must bear in mind also, that if a venue like Hall Green isn't safe from the clutches of these greedy property developers then nowhere is.

 

Let's stick together with the "Save Hall Green" group. Please help by doing this.

 

Many thanks.

 

 

[John Leslie]

Please note:

 

The email address to contact the Birmingham Council Planning department in the above should be planningandregenerationenquiries@birmingham.gov.uk

[brianbuck]

Thanks for the correction John - apologies for the error.

[Deano]

Will send my mail off. But if I didn't want a property developer to redevelop my stadium, then I would be a bit of a fool to sell the land to them in the first place.

 

Like Cradley, this could end up going higher than the council.

 

 

Edit - Email now sent.

Edited May 8, 2016 by Deano

[Aces51]

Email sent.

[brianbuck]

Thanks very much all - hopefully plenty more will do the same.

 

Regarding Deano's point. The situation is a bit more complex that this. The GRA's parent company Risk Capital Partners, are the ones calling the shots. They are just speculators who bought the business in the expectation that they could re-sell it at a big profit. The GRA's core business is greyhound racing but they are having their arms twisted in this instance.

[Guest]

Hall Green, Birmingham, speedway memories:

http://www.defunctspeedway.co.uk/Birmingham%20Hall%20Green.htm

[salty]

Thanks very much all - hopefully plenty more will do the same.

 

Regarding Deano's point. The situation is a bit more complex that this. The GRA's parent company Risk Capital Partners, are the ones calling the shots. They are just speculators who bought the business in the expectation that they could re-sell it at a big profit. The GRA's core business is greyhound racing but they are having their arms twisted in this instance.

Brian, isn't this the same position as Oxford and Wimbledon? RCP owned those stadia (through their purchase of GRA) on the back of loans that ended up in the control of NAMA (the Irish bad debts). GRA have been owned by RCP for over 10 years and there is no question the acquisition wasn't to run dog tracks, but to build houses with the help of their "friends" at Galliard Homes.

[arthur cross]

Salty's much more up-to-speed than most on this forum regarding the saga of the Greyhound Racing Association being bought around a decade ago by Risk Capital with Galliard Homes lurking in the background and the purchase being heavily funded by multi-millions of loans from Irish banks that were made a year or two before the 2007/08 global banking crisis hit the Irish economy even harder than the UK economy ... hence why the collective debt-agency for Irish banking known as NAMA came to be regarded as the effective owner of the GRA.

 

If you've a lot of spare time, you can catch up with a lot more of this saga on both the Oxford and Wimbledon stadium threads on this forum ... however, I can fully understand extremely clued-up West Midlands folk like Brian Buck are only really getting to grips with all of this now that a GRA track near them is on the brink of redevelopment.

 

So to sum up umpteen posts on the Oxford/Wimbledon threads quickly while also bringing things right up-to-date ...

 

... it's appeared for quite a few years that the GRA's dog tracks are profitable on a day-to-day basis but aren't making enough of a dent into either the multi-millions of loans (or the interest payments linked to them) to cover medium/long-term investment in things like stadium facilities ... hence why the freehold of both Hall Green and Belle Vue have been sold off to keep NAMA at arm's length as reported in this March 2014 article from the Racing Post, http://www.racingpost.com/news/greyhounds/hall-green-freehold-is-sold-for-3m-to-packaging-firm/1630159/

 

and on a wider GRA basis than just Hall Green's situation ...

 

... Galliard Homes finally get the chance to start showing in a few days' time what they can do with the urban regeneration of a landmark sporting venue once West Ham round off this season at Upton Park's Boleyn Ground and move to the Olympic Stadium ... Galliard have long planned to showcase what they do at Upton Park as a marker for what they could do at either Oxford or Wimbledon if given a similar chance.

 

... Perry Barr isn't in similar danger because it's the only track in the GRA's modern-day portfolio that has always been run in partnership with its city council with the GRA never having had anything to do with its freehold or the ability to cash-in on that angle.

[brianbuck]

Many thanks for this information Arthur. You are obviously much more clued up on this kind of business than I am am so I'm grateful for your input. I can't speak for Oxford or Wimbledon although I obviously fully support all the efforts being made to save both of them, but locally, we need to convince Birmingham City Council that Hall Green is a profitable greyhound stadium and a valuable community asset that shouldn't be lost to the City. There are influential people who are supporting the campaign such as the three Hall Green Councillors and the MP Roger Godsiff, and there is reason to believe that several senior members of the planning committee are likely to be sympathetic - but we can't just leave it to these few - that's why I urge as many people as possible to E-Mail the Council and object to its destruction.

 

Just a reminder: E-Mail's to planningandregenerationenquiries@birmingham.gov.uk quoting application reference 2016/01219/PA - just urge the committee to reject the application - no need to go into details. The Planning Committee will consider the application on Thursday 26th May, so no time to be lost.

[brianbuck]

The planning committee have deferred a decision on whether or not to allow the application to demolish the stadium until the end of June.

[brianbuck]

I visited Hall Green stadium with John Hart last Monday week when we unveiled a wall plaque to commemorate the fact that the stadium was the home of Birmingham Speedway from 1928 until 1938. This was the first time I have been inside the stadium for about 30 years, and I must say that we were made very welcome by the manager and his staff who were extremely interested in the history of speedway at Hall Green. None of them has ever seen live speedway although several had watched it on television and I got the distinct impression that they wouldn't be averse to having it back at their venue if this were ever to become a possibility.

 

Although Hall Green stadium is over 90 years old, it is a modern venue with facilities and a degree of spectator comfort that would match any existing speedway stadium in the country, and despite it being sited in the middle of a residential area, it seems to be very well shielded by the large two-tier grandstand/restaurant which extends the length of the home straight, by a huge totaliser board about 60/70 feet high which goes right round the first and second bends, and the 48 room hotel block which is owned by the stadium, all round the last two bends. Along most of the back straight is the snooker club with just two short exposed areas on either side of it which I think could be shielded by a bit of high fencing. The whole of the stadium is also surrounded by a large car park and some tall, dense trees, so my opinion is that noise would not be the major issue that people think it is.

 

In the past, there have been several half-hearted attempts to reintroduce speedway to Hall Green. These have been met with virtual uprisings from the residents with the usual emotional and exaggerated claims of noise nuisance which have frightened away the would-be promoters concerned. Hall Green is not the "select" district that it once was, but no doubt the same reaction would recur if someone tried again, but my view is that a potential promoter with a bit of clout and perhaps a bit of influence within the City Council, could possibly be successful with a planning application, and if this were the case, I think that the residents would find that it was not so impossible to live with a couple of hours speedway a week there.

 

In addition to the super grandstand which gives excellent views of the track, there is quite a bit of outside terracing on the home straight although the lower parts are below the level of the track (rather like the home straight at Coventry) and wouldn't give a very good view of the racing. On the third and fourth bends is a sloping tarmac terrace which from the quantity of grass and weeds growing through it, hasn't been used for some years - but it wouldn't be a massive job to clean it up.

 

A big surprise for me on my visit was to find that even though it has been 78 years since the last speedway meeting at the stadium, the old pits are still there - being used as store sheds these days. The old 302 yard speedway track has long been grassed over, but its outline is still clearly visible from the high point of the grandstand. New floodlighting sited on high masts on the outside of the dog track, seems to have been installed fairly recently and these would adequately illuminate a new speedway circuit as well as the dog track.

 

This is all supposition of course. The obstacles are many and would be very difficult to overcome, but if the "Save Hall Green" group do prove successful in getting the planning committee to turn down the plans to demolish the stadium - then there is the chance for someone like me to dream and think "why not!"

[25yearfan]

Cracking stuff Brian!

 

I've long said that Hall Green Stadium could be the answer to Cradley Heathens long search for a new track of their own!

 

It's only 13 miles from Cradley and is served by a train station!

 

Lets hope it survives!

[brianbuck]

That's absolutely true. There is a direct train line from Cradley Heath to Hall Green and the journey takes only about 30 minutes. Not only that, there are four trains every hour on this line and the last train back leaves Hall Green at 11pm. The stadium is no more than 5 minutes walk from Hall Green station.

 

Hall Green is on the opposite side of the City to Perry Barr and in my opinion, speedway there would have a minimal effect on Perry Barr attendances. In 1929 and 1930, there were teams from both tracks in the Southern League - and this was during the worst economic recession this country has ever known!