Todd Boehly and his fellow co-owners at Chelsea are working on ways to improve the stadium facilities at the club, with several options remaining open to the new ownership group.
Redeveloping Stamford Bridge was one of Roman Abramovich's big hopes for the club in the final decade of his reign but due to a lack of space around the ground, being hemmed in by railway tracks and buildings, no decisive moves were made.
Although planning permission had been granted for a £1bn redevelopment of the stadium, with models created and architects brought in, nothing was ever finalised and the progress took a back seat when Abramovich's visa was not renewed in 2018.
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Upon announcing the agreement to buy Chelsea from Abramovich, Boehly-Clearlake made their commitments evident, stating: "The proposed new owners will commit £1.75bn in further investment for the benefit of the club. This includes investments in Stamford Bridge, the academy, the women’s team and Kingsmeadow and continued funding for the Chelsea Foundation."
So far the investments into the academy, women's team and Chelsea's own transfer activities have all been proven right, but Stamford Bridge is maybe the biggest project of them all. An opportunity has arisen to make progress on this front though, as nearly two acres of land becomes available for the club to buy.
Based behind the west stand and the main entrance to the stadium grounds, Housing Association Stoll have placed their land up for sale, and it could be available for just £50million - a small price to pay if it makes the renovation smoother. Chelsea had previously been blocked from building upwards due to blocking the light of houses in the local area, whilst expanding outwards is near impossible currently.
It is reported in the Daily Mail that Chelsea could buy up to 1.2 acres of the land - 60% - following consultation with the flat residents that currently occupy the 157 homes for armed services veterans. The new land would have 'at least 50 new flats'.
The timing of this is incidental as co-owner and new director Jonathan Goldstein spoke about Stamford Bridge earlier in the week on American TV, saying: "It's one of the great questions that everyone is asking," when posed with the great Stamford Bridge decision.
"The fact that people need to be aware of is that there is no existing planning permission on the site," he added. "There was planning permission but it's lapsed so we have to start again. We're at the beggining of that process and obviously there's two alternatives. You either redevelop the existing stadium of you take it down and build a new one on the site.
"We're very tight at Stamford Bridge, the Chelsea Pitch Owners are part of that process and we're going through our own educational process, we will then consult with fans and local authorities. I would hope that over the next 12 to 18 months you will be able to invite me back and I'll be able to tell you how we intend to take that forwards.
"We're really focused on understand the locality and understanding what we've got at Stamford Bridge and maximising the opportunity and the excitement for the fans."
Goldstein has been working alongside Boehly, Behdad Eghbali and Jose E. Feliciano of Clearlake Capital - the majority investors - and is the CEO of investment business Cain international and is also a property developer. Speaking about the new regime and life owning a football club, he said: "It's fun and it's very enjoyable. It's very high profile. You can't open a newspaper without seeing Todd or Behdad so that's a different aspect to our lives that we haven't had but ultimately it's about people.
"If you enjoy interacting with people and you enjoy interacting with the really wonderful quality people that we've found at Chelsea, at all levels of the organisation through the football side to the non-football side, then it becomes like every other business. You need to ensure, because it's so high profile, that you do it well."
Stamford Bridge can currently hold just over 40,000 fans, making it just the ninth largest stadium in the league this season, and there have been plans to increase capacity in order to improve matchday revenue and fan experiences, also coming in line with Boehly's plans to extract the untapped potential in the club and create a modern global superpower.
Both Goldstein and Boehly were present at one of Chelsea's training sessions earlier in the week with new manager Graham Potter.
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