Arsenal get approval for new stadium

Arsenal have been given the go-ahead to build a new 60,000-capacity stadium after local councillors approved the English premier league club's 150 million pounds ($210 million) plan on Monday.

Islington council voted 34 in favour with seven against and one abstention on granting permission for the new stadium site in Ashburton Grove, less than a mile from the club's current Highbury home.

The decision is still subject to further approval by London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, who has 14 days to block or back the scheme, but the vote came as a huge relief to the Arsenal board.

"We were absolutely amazed," said club director Danny Fiszman. "We were expecting a tight squeeze. This was a matter of life and death for us."

Arsenal are desperate to move from the 38,000-capacity Highbury, their home since 1913, to a purpose-built site at Ashburton Grove, currently home to light industrial units.

The Londoners want to be able to compete financially with the likes of Manchester United, whose Old Trafford stadium holds nearly 68,000 paying spectators.

Arsenal vice-president David Dein said the vote was a "momentous" occasion.

"It's a momentous day. A momentous night," Dein said on Monday night.

"Our fans need a bigger stadium. We are now competing with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Juventus, we have got to make sure that we have a stadium to match."

Arsenal, who spent 10 million pounds preparing their proposal, say the 27-acre project will create 2,300 new homes, 1,800 jobs, health facilities and children's nurseries.

However Bettina Reiber, a local resident and member of the Islington Stadium Community Alliance, who campaigned against the stadium, said the council had not listened to their concerns.

"The council hasn't listened at all to what people said tonight," she said after the first vote approved the building of the stadium.

"The football justifies everything. Not a single resident could identify a positive benefit apart from 'I will have a football ticket'."

A second council vote on Monday approved a plan to relocate businesses from the Ashburton Grove site. There were 31 votes in favour, eight against and three abstentions.

WENGER SUPPORT
A third vote on plans to turn the Highbury site into housing with the pitch serving as the residents' garden was also accepted by 34 votes in favour to seven against.

Work on the stadium will begin in mid 2002 with plans for it to be complete for the start of the 2004-5.

Objectors to the project feared nearby houses would be swamped by the residential and office buildings planned, predicted traffic chaos on the nearby Holloway Road, one of the main arteries out of London and doubted the club's figures for the number of jobs the new scheme would create.

Dein said last week that it would be an immense disappointment if the plan was rejected.

Fiszman said before Monday's meeting: "If there is a 'no' vote we would have to identify a new site and go through the whole process again. That could take two years."

Manager Arsene Wenger, who last week signed a four-year extension to his contract, said at the time that failure to get approval for the stadium would be a "huge setback".