ANN BUDGE, the owner of Hearts, described the club being granted planning permission for a new £12million main stand as a “momentous day” and admitted she had feared the project would never come to fruition.
Edinburgh council’s planning committee gave her plans the green light, which was far from as given, on Wednesday morning, and it means the club are now not only definitely staying in Gorgie but will within a year have greatly improved on what is already one of the best stadiums in Scotland.
Demolition work on the existing site is due to begin as early as next month and the new 7,000 seater enclosure, which will take the capacity up to just over 20,000, is expected be operational by next September.
In 2004, then Hearts owner Chris Robinson controversially agreed to sell the ground to house builders Cala for £22 million and groundshare at neighbouring Murrayfield. Robinson's successor, the controversial Lithuanian businessman Vladimir Romanov, put a stop to that but his proposed £51 million plans for a new main stand was in truth never going to happen.
"It is a sense of relief because it has been a lot of hard work,” said Rudge. “There have been a few frustrations along the way and at times I thought: 'This is never going to happen.' Some of our supporters perhaps jumped the gun a bit and were assuming it was already a done deal as soon as the hearing was announced. I can assure you we knew it was not a done deal.
“We still had to convince the planning committee to approve it, so there was a degree of nervousness. There were some similarities to coming out of administration because when we were trying to get the CVA through, there were also last-minute hurdles. It was two steps forward and one step back.
“The fact we have approval now is fantastic. Of course, it's just the beginning of the real hard work. We're raring to go. It’s really important because for how long have people being saying: ‘What’s going to happen about Tynecastle, are we moving, are we staying?’
“It's really important for the district, the Gorgie and Dalry area. Without Tynecastle, what else is there in that part of Edinburgh? We're also really close to the city.
“We're a city-centre club and we have to behave like one. That means looking after the community as well as our own supporters, plus taking a pride in Edinburgh. That's what we want to do.”
Budge is a hero to the Hearts supporters for her leading role within the Foundation of Hearts (FOH) which helped take the club out of administration in 2014, and she revealed unnamed individuals had put forward £3m of their own money into the project.
“We have a commitment from the FoH to contribute £3 million. We have a number of benefactors who will, in total, cover another £3 million,” said Budge. “That's 50 per cent of the funding from supporters and benefactors. The benefactors are basically philanthropic givings, which is very generous.
“It’s hard to believe at times, the generosity of some of the Hearts supporters. It is quite amazing. These people want to see a successful Hearts. Of course, they are Hearts supporters, so they want to see Hearts being successful on the pitch.
“But more than that, they want Hearts achieving it’s potential as a business and a club - and really playing at the levels they believe we should be playing at. That really means we need to have a very solid financial base and business base to support everything that goes on at the club.
“We have managed the club carefully over the last two years so we also have a reasonably healthy bank balance. There is a small (funding) gap and we have a number of plans afoot, which we will now accelerate to fill that gap. It’s an amount we are more that confident we can raise through the club.”
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