Newcastle United are leaning towards building a new stadium adjacent to their existing St James’ Park home.
Telegraph Sport can reveal for the first time the club’s board are getting closer to recommending to Newcastle’s Saudi Arabian owners that the best option for their stadium expansion is the construction of a £1.2 billion new home with a capacity of just under 70,000.
Although the club remain adamant that a final decision has not been made – this will be up to majority stakeholders Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund when they are presented with the two options of rebuilding St James’ Park or moving to the new site – there is growing momentum behind the new stadium plan.
The project is an exciting and hugely ambitious one, which will give Newcastle a new home that is the second largest club stadium in the country behind Manchester United’s Old Trafford.
Intriguingly, the new stadium will be constructed using an overlapping footprint, which means it will be built on some of the land St James’ Park currently stands on.
This means that only a small part of Leazes Park, the protected Victorian-era green space, will be needed which, it is hoped, should be more palatable to the city council as well as local residents.
One of the ideas mooted is to build a new green space close by to offset the loss of the park land needed for the new stadium, with the club also developing a leisure, business and retail complex at Strawberry Place, where the Stack fanzone currently sits.
However, Newcastle are continuing to explore a second proposal which will focus on the expansion of the Gallowgate End and would be roughly half the cost of building an entirely new stadium.
It has been widely assumed that the new stadium would be built on all of Leazes Park, which would have been difficult for the city council to accept given it is part of a conservation area.
Even though the majority of the park will not be impacted by the new stadium, it is still likely to face a complicated process before it is granted planning permission.
But instead of concreting over the cherished green space, Newcastle’s plan is similar to the one adopted by Tottenham Hotspur when they built their new stadium in north London, making use of the land where they already own the leasehold.
The current Leazes End may even form part of the new stadium, which would mean it is the last part of the arena to be built, with the old stand knocked down as the new one is constructed around it.
Ground would retain iconic place on city centre skyline
Sources have described the location as being like a diagonal shift away from the listed buildings that make the redevelopment of St James’ Park so difficult. It would be a five to 10-minute walk away from where the Gallowgate End is now and would mean the club retaining its iconic city centre location.
The multi-storey car park at the corner of the Leazes End would be demolished but the road behind the Milburn Stand would not be affected.
Telegraph Sport understands that the new bowl-shaped stadium would be higher than St James’ Park, making it an even more imposing feature of the city’s skyline.
It is also thought the proposal could allow Newcastle to continue playing at St James’ Park while the new stadium is constructed and would not force the team to relocate their home games. Although it remains to be seen how this will work in practice – a temporary relocation could still be needed – and it is not clear at this stage whether the capacity will be reduced while some of the work is carried out.
Newcastle is a host city for the European Championship in 2028 which is another complicating factor.
The lack of suitable options for a relocation have weighed heavily on the club during the feasibility study. Playing games at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light would not be possible because of safety fears and the only realistic option would be to move games to Murrayfield in Edinburgh 120 miles away.
The idea would be to finish the construction of a new stadium within six to seven years, which could mean Newcastle move into it at the start of the 2031-32 season.
However, although the club believe they have found their preferred option, they still want to consult supporters before making a final decision and will make a presentation to the Fans Advisory Board later this year.
There is also the chance that PIF will reject the idea to move given the high costs, the opposition to leaving St James’ Park from a large number of fans and the potential for the project to be delayed by legal challenges.
As a result, the second option to rebuild and redevelop St James’ Park also remains on the table.
Cost of expansion on site estimated to cost up to £800 million
The estimated cost of that project is believed to be around £600-£800 million, which is half the price of the new stadium.
There are still some within the club who would prefer to stay put, but even they recognise the advantages that a new-build, multi-purpose stadium with state-of-the-art facilities would bring in terms of maximising revenue.
Interestingly, an expanded St James’ Park, with a huge new Gallowgate End, would have a capacity well in excess of 60,000. For some that is big enough to satisfy demand and the team would also be able to continue playing there while the construction work takes place. It would also be quicker to finish.
However, there would be little improvement made to the East Stand if the club decided to go down that route, which would leave three large stands and a much smaller one, similar to Dublin’s Aviva Stadium.
A firm decision will not be made until the proposals have been presented to fans and PIF who will have the final say on which option they want to take.
Newcastle United declined to comment on the details of the new stadium plan when approached by Telegraph Sport, but a spokesman said it would be “premature to say a decision has been made ” and that “all options remain on the table.”
Analysis: Cheaper, quicker option may yet win the day
There has been a sizeable shift in thinking at Newcastle United. Having pretty much decided they wanted to stay at a modernised and expanded St James’ Park this time last year, the preference now is thought to be a move to a new purpose-built stadium in the shadow of their existing home.
It is a shift in opinion that is widely shared among fans. When the club conducted a survey last year, more than 70 per cent wanted to remain at St James’ Park. Anecdotally, though, more and more people have come round to the idea that, to compete as a modern European power, Newcastle need a larger, state-of-the-art home.
There is a widely-perceived assumption that history needs to be sacrificed for ambition in the new world of profit and sustainability rules (PSR).
Newcastle need to maximise revenue streams and the larger the stadium, the more lucrative the corporate receipts, as well your usual match-day income from ticket-buying fans.
A multi-purpose stadium with facilities as good as any in the country would, in theory, give the club more money to spend on players and the product on and off the pitch would rise.
As Brad Miller, the man in charge of the project, told fans at an event last year, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity and they need to make sure the right decision is made. Money always talks loudest in the end, but that is also why a move is not definite just yet.
Watching Newcastle play in a new home, that would no longer be called St James’ Park – as naming rights would also be required to boost income – is far more palatable than it once was. Behind the scenes the tone has shifted. The key decision-makers seem to think they know what they want to do, but they still have a lot of work to get through before we see spades in the ground.
It would certainly be impressive, standing even higher than St James’ Park does now, an even more imposing feature of the city’s skyline. It would be the second-largest club stadium in Britain and a shining beacon of not just the football club’s hold over the city; its dominance over everyday life and conversations, but also Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund’s (PIF) control of it.
The new stadium, whether people like it or not, would also be a symbol of PIF’s power and influence.
The new home could be part of a much wider redevelopment of the area. There could well be retail, residential and business projects tied in with the new stadium and in a region crying out for investment, this is bound to appeal to the city council too.
But will PIF agree that a new stadium is not only needed, but that it also needs to pay for it? The largest sovereign wealth fund on the planet can certainly afford the estimated £1.2 billion cost of the new stadium, but that is not the same thing as agreeing to do it.
One of the reasons PIF was attracted to Newcastle as a football club was its history, the romance of a one-club city that has not won a major trophy since 1969. It liked the idea of restoring a sleeping giant to its former, long-lost glory.
Of rising up and disrupting the old order, giving the big clubs a bloody nose. It is “on brand” for a country like Saudi Arabia which is trying to modernise its economy and expand its global influence.
St James’ Park was an iconic part of that attraction but there could also be cold, hard business logic at play here too. If Newcastle expand and redevelop St James’ Park, it would be considerably cheaper.
It would be around half the cost of building an entirely new stadium and the capacity would be well in excess of 60,000. For the sake of a few thousand extra seats and state-of-the-art facilities in all four stands, will PIF agree it is worth paying more than £1 billion to achieve?
You then have the planning battle to come. Newcastle intend to build on a far smaller chunk of the protected, Victorian-era green space of Leazes Park than people initially thought, but that does not mean it will simply be given the green light.
There are bound to be objections from vested interests and local residents. It could become bogged down in legal challenges. Newcastle have tried to build a new stadium on green space in the city before and that was blocked in the 1990s under former owner Sir John Hall. History could easily repeat itself and does PIF want that sort of negative publicity and hassle?
What will be in it for the owners in terms of the wider redevelopment of the surrounding area? What would they get out of it? PIF are not merely providing charity to the city of Newcastle.
The football club is one of Newcastle’s most important institutions but it is not the only thing that matters to people.
Staying at St James’ Park is the simpler, cheaper, more straightforward and quicker option. Building a new stadium is extremely expensive and would take a long time to finish.
A timescale of seven years has been mooted, but it could be even longer. Newcastle could well be playing at their current home for most of the next decade.
Expanding and modernising St James’ Park, Telegraph Sport understands, could be completed in around five years and the team would be able to carry on playing there while the work is carried out.
The Newcastle hierarchy are moving closer to making a new stadium their preferred option, but there are still a lot of stages to go through before a final decision is made.
As with everything in life, the easier and cheaper option can sometimes make more sense than the grander, more expensive one to those who hold the power to make those calls. This is a story that has not yet reached a definitive conclusion.
