Percy feeling pinch at New Road (From Worcester News)

Percy feeling pinch at New Road

9:00am Monday 22nd June 2009

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THE credit crunch is biting all over the world and Worcestershire County Cricket Club is no different.

Having just splashed out £2million on the new Graeme Hick Pavilion, the New Road side have had to change the plans for the hotel they are looking to start building this autumn.

With the proposal for the new 120-bedroom building set to go before Worcester City Council’s planning committee at the end of July, the funding for the hotel has had to change.

Originally the club were looking to sell the hotel to a pension fund in a bid to help fund the third and final phase of the development of New Road.

However, following the crash of the money markets, chairman Martyn ‘Percy’ Price says that they have had to ask for outside help to fund the hotel and that the final phase — the development of the New Road side of the ground — will have to be put on hold.

“The next part of the development will be the hotel. Hopefully, it is going before the planning committee before the end of July,” Price confirmed. “I have to emphasise that so far the planning committee have been very supportive in everything that we have done.

“We fully expect that the council will grant us planning permission and hopefully work will be starting in September time. It will involve quite a bit of outside investment from friends of mine, supporters of the club, putting in chunks of £100,000 for a share, which will hopefully give them, over a five year period, a return of 60 per cent.

“The original plan was to sell the hotel off to a pension fund, but the yields are such that won’t give us anywhere near the profit we were looking for. The bank have been very supportive, but we need to get quite a bit of money on board — in the region of £3million to £4million — which will enable us to get it built and then maybe in five years sell it to a pension fund when we get a far bigger amount of money for it.”

Should the economy recover in that five-year period, Worcestershire will then be able to raise the remaining buildings above the flood level.

“The plans for a new media centre and hospitality boxes will have to wait.

“Once we have built the hotel, we will then have to wait two, three, four years before we do the final phase. I would love to see that done while I’m still the chairman,” Price added.

Worcestershire have sold the lease for the hotel to Premier Inns and even the recession has hit that.

“We have a 99-year lease with the sitting tenants and for that they would have probably given us between £12.5million and £13million three years ago, now they would probably only give us £9million because of interests rates and everything else,” the chairman said.

“Hopefully in five years time things will be better and we can get a much better sale of the hotel, pay back everybody and the club will be left with a nice profit and hopefully we can continue with the development.”

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