Sinister development in new Spurs stadium

Augmerson

Telegraph wrote:

A fire that gutted the last business standing in the way of Tottenham Hotspur's £400 million stadium redevelopment plans may have been started deliberately.

The owners of Archway Sheet Metal Works vowed to return to the factory gutted by a mystery blaze.

Fire investigators are currently probing the cause of the fire that broke out in the early hours of Tuesday following months of "threats" to raze it to the ground.

Police said it was "too early" to determine if the blaze was the result of an arson attack, although the firm's owners are said to have received "bomb threats" and sinister calls on a "day-to-day basis".

The inferno gutted the entire first floor at the two-storey metal works that stands in the shadow of the North Stand at Premiership club Tottenham's White Hart Lane home.

Apparently they have been getting threats for a long time. Archway Steel had been fighting a CPO (Compulsory Purchase Order) to sell up to ENIC (English National Investment Company, which owns Spurs) but they lost.

There was a propsoed deal from ENIC that Archway would relocate the business to a block of land that ENIC own further down near the North Circular in Northeast London, with all costs covered plus planning expenses paid to build a new factory.

But Archway would then have to fund the cost of building a new factory and all other associated building works costs, from scratch. This is a huge amount of money. And Archway have already lost 500,000 sterling fighting the CPO.

I guess they don't have much choice right now. They'll have to take ENIC's offer.

Messy stuff.

Augmerson

Reminds me of the very protracted Anfield redevelopment and how the streets around the stadium had been bought up by the club but left to go to ruin while waiting for the last few residents to be bought out. Mate of mine lived for a while near Anfield and it was a bit of a kip. Very regrettable that the then owners of Liverpool let that happen.