AS A CRUNCH meeting on the stadium draws nearer the Bucks Free Press has been inundated with letters arguing for or against.

On Monday night Wycombe District Council's Cabinet will decide how, or if, to go ahead with the plans.

Commercial property expert Michael Garvey and GASP member Alan France express their highly contrasting views on the most controversial issue in Wycombe for years.

Which one convinces you? Leave your comments at the end of the article.

'Paradise Lost' - Michael Garvey

Whilst the debate around the Sports Village and Stadium proposals might not be quite so epic at the moment as the theological debate in John Milton’s epic 17th Century poem, it has the potential!

Like many businessmen in the district I have sat back in silence and watched the debate rage, but as the opening/closing window of opportunity reaches a critical point, I feel compelled to put pen to paper in an attempt to provide some balance to the argument with some business objective insight.

In truth, as Managing Director of Stupples (commercial property experts) I have more insight to the issues than most and as Vice Chair of Buckinghamshire Business First (although the views expressed here are entirely personal) I am aware of the perilous economic state the county and in particular Wycombe District finds itself in 2011.

I have lived in High Wycombe all of my life and have seen at first hand its changing face, with contrasts from the race riots in the 1980’s to the optimism around the opening of Eden in 2008.

When Eden opened I thought that High Wycombe stood on the edge of a springboard and was about to take a great leap forward in how the town was perceived both internally and externally, but 3 years of deep recession later I am genuinely worried that the edge we are standing on is a precipice.

The latest unemployment figures for the district are alarming and by one of the measures (the total loss of jobs over a 5 year period), the district is the worst performing of all 380 districts in Britain. Yes, that’s right – the worst!

Unemployment is now no better than the national average, compared to very low unemployment just a few years ago. For reasons that are still unclear, the district has suffered far worse than most in the recession and pre-recession levels of employment are not due to get back to where they were before 2016.

Civic pride appears to be eroding and I am increasingly meeting business people who are worried about the future for their children and grandchildren. These proposals won’t provide all the answers, but civic pride can offer a very tangible boosts. Other stadium proposals nationally point to this.

A lot of what I have read in the press and on blogs by the active “minority” seems to be about a rugby stadium for elite sportsmen, but very little is written about the sporting village and the opportunities this will give to young people in the district and the great good it will do for many of the sporting clubs that currently have to make do with very poor facilities compared to clubs in other districts.

When I was younger and playing football I knew how hard it was to find an Astroturf pitch in the district and more recently when managing a boys football team at Holmer Green have experienced the same thing again.

My son plays for Wycombe Hockey Club; a club with a full range of girls, boys and adult teams that play to a very high standard in the national context.

They have very poor facilities currently, with no clubhouse facilities and are finding it increasingly difficult to retain better players. Others clubs face similar problems.

We all are capable of being NIMBYs when we want to, but in 2011 can we afford this luxury.

There is a need more than ever to think about the bigger picture of economic development and job creation.

I attended one of the events organised by Wycombe Sports Development Limited recently and looking at the proposals objectively was struck by how sensitive the design proposals are and how significant the economic benefits are.

Most districts would give their eye teeth for this sort of development, but yet so far the debate seems to be focusing on a minority of individuals with a NIMBY charter being affected.

The development proposals seem to be sensitive to the environment, with building footprints of just over 20% of the site overall and the economic multiplier effect appears significant, as does job creation.

Highlights include;

• At least 400 new jobs

• Social benefits worth at least £5M pa

• £500,000 pa income for WDC

• New public space

• State of the art facilities for local clubs and schools.

With proposals like this there are always winners and losers, but for the parents of young people who are unemployed or have children lacking in decent sporting facilities; for business people wondering how to attract young skilled people to their businesses (Buckinghamshire has 25% less 20-30 year olds than the national average living in the county) and for business people who generally believe that civic pride is important for the economic prosperity of an area, I would ask you to stand up and make your voice heard, even if this is only to express conditional support whilst you are gathering all the facts.

We might wake up in the near future and realise that these proposals won’t happen, because the NIMBYs have been vocal and the majority has been silent. Paradise lost indeed.

'It’s a plan, but is it a good one?' - Alan France

At last we see a plan. £500,000 of ratepayers’ money has been spent so far on investigations into the new stadium proposals without the public having a basic idea of what we’re being offered and whether the figures can work.

We now understand that the project is intended to be built in stages, the first phase being the stadium.

Sports clubs who are attracted by the hype, be warned.

All other elements, such as a Badminton Complex, will need to go through the usual planning process and will have to be fully funded by the sports clubs themselves, not WSDL.

Let’s be clear, WSDL gets what it wants now.

The community has to pay for its own facilities and might or might not get them in the future.

The clubs argue that the project is a good idea as it will create 400 new jobs. Really?

The Community Needs and Benefits Statement from the 2010 consultation referred to 60 new full-time jobs.

Presumably the extra 340 are part-time match-day jobs.

In employment terms, is this a good trade for the 300 skilled, service industry careers that are existing at the air park that will be lost should the stadium development go ahead?

Around 2,500 car parking spaces have been conveniently omitted from the artists impression shown in the BFP last week. You may also note that the runway runs off the edge of the site and the land rises gently behind the stadium.

This is surprising as the Air Park is on a plateau and the land behind actually drops down towards Marlow. The plateau effect means noise and light will be a big issue with a 24-7 stadium.

The artist’s impression is a pretty picture with little veracity behind it.

We are told that Council funding will be limited to enabling land for 506 houses, on 32 acres.

Those plots would have to very small, so small that it’s unlikely they’ll command a high enough price to match the funds needed, especially in the current depressed housing market.

This means that more land would be required for more houses, thus ironically reducing the space for any ‘Sports Village’.

Let us try to understand the logic of the numbers. The business plan suggests that the ‘new stadium effect’ produces an increase in attendance of up to 40%. It is rather unusual, then, that the clubs have used increases of well over 100% in their financial predictions.

WSDL has produced no evidence of where these new fans will come from, just the vague hope that ‘if we build it and they will come.’ In reality attracting additional fans to matches is difficult in this financial climate.

Furthermore, within a 35 mile radius there are four rugby and six football clubs, all doing their utmost to increase fan numbers.

Massive planned hikes in ticket prices hardly suggests a thought-through strategy for persuading fans to transfer their allegiance to a new venue.

WSDL dismisses the transport issues that will inevitably occur if the stadium goes ahead.

A 24-7 venue, with 500+ houses with a couple of cars each? The chaos is best illustrated by the times the M40 is closed and traffic is diverted through Stokenchurch and the B482 Marlow Road, or simply at John Lewis sale time.

WSDL has outlined 4 entrance road and 5 exits, which may get cars off site quickly, but will dump them straight onto local roads.

In fact, the fifth exit they specify is currently a pleasant public footpath towards Lane End in the middle of AONB and the proposed new road from J4 would also carve through what are currently green fields.

Let’s look at WSDL’s proposed mortgage plan. What WSDL is actually proposing is for WDC to turn down the current rent for a reduced payment of possibly £150k.

WDC will get this if the teams perform better and if the stadium naming rights are sold and if their high risk strategy of ‘if we build it, they will come’ pans out and more fans miraculously appear in their thousands.

The undeniable facts are: we’re living in straitened times, sponsorship is reducing and match attendances are in long-term decline.

If it doesn’t work, Wycombe District Council will shoulder the deficit, not WSDL. There are too many ‘ifs’ for our liking.

Like much of the hype from WSDL, the facts are rather different to the publicity.