Try to bring positions closer to the Generalitat and the City Council after the disagreement with Ximo Puig
ANDl Valencia has started conversations with the Generalitat and the Valencia City Council to request a modification of the ATE (Strategic Territorial Action) that affects the moving your stadium what expires on May 15. In fact, from all parties it is considered that the ATE -the plan that includes the requalification and sale of the old site of Mestalla and the construction of the new one on Avenida de las Valencian Courts– is virtually settled or “dead”, depending on Sandra Gomez, Deputy Mayor of Valencia.
Almost a year after Valencia ruled out the sale of the site to the ADU Mediterráneo cooperative, which had not found financial guarantees, the club has asked the Generalitat to change the conditions of the ATE (in aspects related to buildability, tertiary use and even endowment) by consider it unfeasible in the current real estate market conditions.
From Valencia argue to institutions who need to sell the old Mestalla site for around 120 million euros to resume works and that they have not found no real estate operator who considers it profitable with that price to build around 500 luxury homes and commercial spaces. In fact they put like example the case of ADU Mediterráneo that had to surrender faced with the impossibility of executing a project that required a investment of 400 million euros in a complex made up of 485 luxury homes in cooperative (55,768 m² of residential) and 41,450 square meters of use tertiary.
What is not understood by the City Council and the Generalitat is how the club has let a year go by without practically looking for a solution or propose an alternative plan. Without prejudice that it is a commitment made by Meriton -in terms and conditions- when the majority shareholding of the club in 2014.
High-level executive meetings
In the last days both authorities municipalities and the Generalitat Valenciana have received calls and messages from the executive part of the club urging them to study “jointly” a solution that satisfies all three parties, which was in a summarized way what The president of Valencia Anil Murthy raised the president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, at the March 2 meeting. In the last few hours, there has been a high-level meeting between regional representatives and club managers to promote a rapprochement afterhe last crossover of statements between Ximo Puig and Anil Murthy.
Puig was so disappointed in that meeting at the Palau de la Generalitat that he was dispatched with a forceful “Meriton has no credibility in Valencian society.” Seeing Anil Murthy the name of the main shareholder involved Peter lim In such an accusation, he responded vehemently through a statement on the club’s letterhead, although signed personally by him: “We are not politicians. We hope that the institutions will get involved and help us to solve the matter of the new stadium and not the other way around, feeding the uncertainty around such an important project for Valencia CF and the public with irresponsible words “.
In this context of trying to reduce tension, the words of Mayor Joan Ribó on March 18 in Ápunt can be better understood: “I don’t want to tighten Valencia’s neck with the ATE,” said the first mayor of Valencia at the time.
The club has budgeted the loss of the ATE
Valencia knew for months that the ATE was not going to comply and that he was probably going to lose the advantages that brought the club in the form of business income. In fact, in the budget that approved the club in the telematics meeting of December 11 they had already provisioned 16 million euros in losses for non-compliance. Thus, the value of the land of Mestalla goes from 111 to 95 million euros, or what is the same: a sale at that price would no longer result in losses on the balance sheet.
Build the Benicalap sports center
The only one sign of goodwill and commitment from Peter Lim came in the meeting of the past September 2020 in which Anil Murthy He exhibited his ccommitment to build the municipal sports center of Benicalap, on the plot attached to the new stadium, at a cost estimated at about 6 million euros. This serious just a first step to show good intentions of the club, but not the only one. From the Public institutions want projects and studies that justify a change in the ATE that had to have been completed – demolishing the old Mestalla, raising the new urban area on that plot, and build the new stadium- between 2015 and 2025. Do not forget that for tear down the current stadium, has to be finished the new and to finish the new one, the club must have sold the old one to a promoter who allows it to continue using it -with the payment of a rent- for at least two years while the new one is finished.
