Palace Chairman Pursuing NSC Move Amid Spurs Appeal

The chairman of English nPower Championship soccer side Crystal Palace, Steve Parish, has insisted that Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur’s legal challenge to their failure to secure the Olympic Park Stadium site will be unsuccessful.

The London club’s chairman has insisted that his club will press on with plans to re-locate to the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre (NSC) site.

As a main aspect of their bid to inherit the Olympic Stadium, Tottenham proposed to revamp the NSC site for the purposes of athletics, and have now asked their lawyers to investigate how binding the recommendations made by the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), which chose West Ham United to take over the Olympic Stadium post-2012, really are.

However, Parish remains convinced that Tottenham’s enquiries into an appeal – with a view to launching a costly judicial review – will be fruitless, stating in an interview with the Croydon Advertisers: “None of their fans want it, no one wants it. It’s just not going to happen.

“The recommendations by the OLPC were all approved and rubber stamped. I just can’t see anyway they would overturn that decision.”

Parish and his partners are currently in the process of trying to arrange a meeting with the London Development Agency (LDA) who hold the lease for the site at Crystal Palace.

“It’s a very difficult process but we are still positive we can make it happen. I seem to have spent the last couple of months in various meetings with all sorts of different people.

“The key thing for us to do now is sit down with the LDA. They are the current lease holders and we won’t be able to get much further unless we can arrange a deal with them.

“But I think we’re getting somewhere with that and hope to meet them in the next few weeks. It’s been tough, such a huge public project was always likely to be. 

“We do have a plan B that we’ve been working on as well which is to redevelop Selhurst Park. But I’m still confident that won’t be needed.

“I’m very keen to make this happen and believe we can do it.”