Nottingham Forest have been offered City Ground freehold for £10m

Nottingham Forest are being offered the chance to buy the land where their stadium sits for a figure in the region of £10million, The Athletic can reveal.

Forest are debating the possibilities of leaving the City Ground in favour of a 50,000-seat stadium in Toton, on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border, six miles out of the city centre.

But Forest, whose Premier League status was all but assured at the weekend, are also being urged to abandon any idea of “moving halfway to Derby” and prioritise securing a long-term future at their 125-year-old home, either by signing a new lease or buying the freehold.

Today it can be revealed:

• Forest are putting together a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to announce a partnership on sporting projects with Nottinghamshire County Council, which owns the land at Toton that is interesting the club
• The freehold for the City Ground has been independently valued at £8m-£10m and its current owner, Nottingham City Council, says it would be “very happy” to try to negotiate a sale
• The last meaningful talks over arranging a new lease took place two months ago
• One civic leader has urged Forest to compare the money needed to save the City Ground with a long-term lease (£1m a year) with the club’s current wage bill (£144.9m a year)

An MOU is a formal written agreement, though not a legally binding one, between two or more parties indicating a common line in action. In this case, it also appears to be part of a shift in local politics and relations, coming as a direct follow-up to the recent county-wide initiative, A New Vision For Sport, attended by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the City Ground.

While that arrangement is waiting to be announced, there is also a commitment from the Labour-run city council, Forest’s current landlords, to get back around the negotiating table and, if possible, try to find a compromise over a new lease.

Speaking to The Athletic, the city council leader, David Mellen, confirmed there was an option available to Forest to buy the freehold “so the destiny (of the City Ground) will be in their own hands rather than having to negotiate with us as the landlord”.

The conditions for such a deal would include potential add-ons if large-scale development took place on the site. Forest, it is understood, have previously offered £4m, without following that up in the current negotiations. 

“There was an offer put in a few years ago that didn’t meet the valuation,” said Mellen. “We hold public money and can’t just choose to say, ‘This is our valuation, independently given to us’, then ignore it. That would not only be against our best-consideration guidelines, but it wouldn’t be fair on the people of Nottingham.”

Forest currently pay an annual rent of £250,000 for the land the 30,000-capacity City Ground sits on. However, the lease expires in 33 years and the club say they need a longer agreement if they are to progress with their “masterplan” to expand it into a 40,000-capacity stadium under the ownership of Greek billionaire Evangelos Marinakis.

Talks have broken down and Forest blame this on the valuation for a new 250-year lease being in the region, to begin with, of £850,000 a year, rising to £1m.

“The rent, if you add it up for the next 33 years, comes to about £9.5m,” Tom Cartledge, Forest’s chairman, said last week. “The proposed rent the council wants us to pay over 250 years is more than £250m. So if we are talking openly about the Football Association’s desire for financial stability and the future of clubs to be secure, it is simply wrong for us to sign up and put this club in a position where we have to pay £250m in rent to stay here.”

Mellen’s response is that the site has been “independently valued by a global valuer who understands the workings of football clubs”. His own analysis, he says, is that the numbers seem perfectly reasonable, especially for a Premier League club operating with huge wealth. There are industrial companies in Nottingham, Mellen adds, paying similar amounts for other areas of council-owned land.

“If you compare it to the wages of the (Forest) staff and what some of the players are being paid who have sat on the bench for most of the season, it puts it into perspective.

“We’re not asking for anything more than the market value. We’re not seeking to exploit the club and get more than the market value.

“One of the reasons why people have been complaining that the rise seems quite high is because the current rent is very, very cheap. It’s undervalued.”

Amid a series of claims and counter-claims, Forest have stated on a number of occasions that they are “frustrated” by a series of delays and what they perceive to be a lack of co-operation and dialogue from the council. With relations stretched, the issue is further complicated by the council issuing a Section 114 notice in November to declare itself, in effect, bankrupt, meaning the government has sent in commissioners to take control.

The council argues it is being blamed unfairly. Behind the scenes, some suspect the Toton idea is more advanced than has been stated. The council set out the proposed terms for a new lease or freehold to Forest in March. Since then, however, nothing has moved forward.

“They (Forest) are scapegoating the council for their situation, where they are under pressure,” Mellen continued. “They are under pressure on the football field, under pressure from their owner.

“The county council’s leader, Ben Bradley (the Conservative MP for Mansfield), is very close to the club. The county council has a big piece of land in Toton, which was earmarked for HS2, and Councillor Bradley’s government has pulled the plug on HS2. So there’s a big piece of land going there.

“But is that a suitable place for a football ground? Would people be able to get there other than in their cars? The trams go there and you could maybe, at a squash, get 100 people on a tram. But how the hell is that going to get 30,000 people, or more, to the club? There will be lots of people in cars causing congestion.

“Forest’s current ground is easily accessible from the train station. Buses go past on Trent Bridge every couple of minutes. You could walk along the river from the tram stop. We don’t have every fan coming in their car.”

On Saturday, when Forest lost 3-2 at home to Chelsea, thousands of fans made their feelings clear with anti-Toton chants and other songs to show how strongly they feel about remaining at the City Ground.

“I understand the fans,” said Mellen. “‘Oh mist rolling in from the Trent’ — how are they going to sing that (in Toton)? We are not just saying we want to keep the ground because it’s convenient to the council, it’s because our overwhelming feeling is that the fans want to stay.

“We want Nottingham Forest, our successful Premier League club, to do the best it possibly can. We want them to stay in the city. We don’t want them to go halfway to Derby. We want them to stay here and we are willing to discuss commercial terms.

“We also recognise that the first part of their name is Nottingham, not Toton, and I think that needs to be considered. To say we are not willing to talk is very far from the truth. I repeat: the city council is ready and willing to sit down and talk. All the club are saying is that we are asking for too much. Well, come forward with your proposal, then.”

Mellen, who hands over the council leadership to Neghat Khan next week, also sought to explain why he did not consider it viable for Forest to look at an industrial piece of land on the other side of Meadow Lane, Notts County’s stadium.

“The land has our (Eastcroft) incinerator on it and that would have to be re-provided, at tens of millions of pounds, somewhere else,” said Mellen.

“That incinerator currently runs a heating system which heats 5,500 houses in the Sneinton and St Ann’s districts. Many buildings in the city centre have mains running out of that site. So it’s not just a free piece of land where we can shift everything across. It’s running vital services to the city. Potentially, they could be moved, but that would probably be more costly than the lease we are asking for.”

(Top photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)