Six-home plan submitted for land next to Bilston church
The properties will be oriented in three semi-detached pairs, with car parking and green spaces created on the plot. Since it stopped as a working church, the building has been sold to a developer who wants to turn it into a furniture shop, which would be in addition to the latest project plan the council is considering. In a planning statement, the architects said the homes would be "sustainably designed and located to support the economy".Council officers will now review the designs, before deciding to approve or reject the plans.
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The Guardian
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In March, Manchester United officially unveiled images and plans for a new 100,000-seater stadium to replace their current aging home, Old Trafford. While the grandiosity of the circus-tent-like structure attracted widespread attention, something else did, too: as part of this project, United are planning to secure land not by paying for it themselves – but by having the UK government do it for them. In order to clear the site that the club wants to use, a rail freight hub will need to be moved to out near St Helens, a town in between Manchester and Liverpool. The cost of moving the hub is estimated to be between £200m and 300m ($270-405m), but that may be an optimistic appraisal; in the past, the project budget was estimated at closer to a £1bn ($1.35bn). Politicians supporting United's plan, like Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, have stressed that no public money will be used to build the stadium. 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When imagining what she would share with folks in Manchester as they contemplated United's plan, she says, 'Everybody here loves the Sea Dogs and I'm sure everybody there loves Manchester United' (City fans aside, of course) 'so it's hard to say no to. But I would encourage them to think about what they're sacrificing. Other people are going to have to pay for that. Something is gonna get cut.' Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson Jonathan Wilson brings expert analysis on the biggest stories from European soccer after newsletter promotion President Donald Trump recently signed into law a massive federal budget bill that will slash social programs across the US and directly impact vulnerable populations in Maine. Meanwhile, the Sea Dogs recently unveiled the results of the renovation paid for in part by their tax break. 'That was another dagger,' Pillsbury says. 'Giving the Sea Dogs $2m – that was a policy choice. Where could have this money gone instead? That's childcare subsidies, that's health care, that's food on kids' plates. The emotional, feelgood nature of these proposals belie the actual reality – there's a cost and a consequence to making these decisions.' Propheter says that to 'get to where we are now' – where American pro teams are approaching the billion dollar mark in public money payouts – 'it took about 50 years of these stadium messes. I wonder if across the pond, folks are like, 'hey, we can get to where America is because we can learn from the NFL, MLB – we can get to ballooning subsidies even faster.'' One thing standing in the way of this dangerous precedent blossoming in the UK may be the agency of the fans. As United seeks to benefit from public money, will fans – imagining where else their tax dollars could go – push back? American fans 'live in a world of fear,' says the University of Michigan's Stefan Syzmanski, 'because of what terrible thing might happen to them' – namely, their team being taken away. When a team owner in the US asks for public money, there is the implicit or explicit threat of the owner moving the team if the municipality doesn't cough up the dough. 'As a matter of rote reflex,' Garofalo says, 'they threaten to move the team. They have all the leverage to demand these subsidies' lest they have to rip up the team and move away. 'The fans treat the team as a community asset and the owners treat it as a private business.' But while American sports fans seem to respect team owners' legal right to manipulate them by threatening to leave, in the UK, Szymanski says, the thinking is different. Relocating your team is 'a borderline criminal activity.' And in general, fans don't think the owners of their teams should get to do whatever they want. 'Manchester United fans do not actually believe' that its proprietors, the Glazer family and Jim Ratcliffe, 'own Manchester United,' Szymanski says. 'That might be the legal position but the reality' is that they, the club's supporters, are 'the true owners' and that the Glazers and Ratcliffe are 'temporary stewards – and pretty shitty ones, at that.'
