Source: Team_Talk
Watkins: Stadium won't bankrupt us
Phase one of the project - which Town chief executive Watkins describes as "the most critically important" - is underway with the identification of a project management firm, and the club's board of directors will now set about producing a business plan and financial viability study over the next 12 weeks.[LNB]Each section of the County Ground, apart from the Don Rogers Stand, will be developed one at a time with the project hoping to be completed by 2013.[LNB]But after chairman Andrew Fitton's consortium ploughed around £10million into Swindon to save the future of the club and tranform its fortunes, Watkins insists the stadium redevelopment with not put all the hard work of the past two years in jeopardy.[LNB]"The whole process of going about building a financial model is to test the waters," he told the Swindon Advertiser. "We are not going to build something that the people of Swindon do not want or need. A football club cannot survive on something that is only used once a week or once a fortnight.[LNB]"You have to sweat the asset and we want to do that seven days a week by making sure it there is demand for whatever we build there. We will not go out and build a whopping great stadium in Swindon and land ourselves with £27million of debt or something like that. No way."[LNB][LNB]
