FOR die-hard fans, the thought of owning a flat overlooking your team’s football pitch is a dream come true.
That was the case for lifelong AFC Wimbledon supporters David Kenwery and Liam Nolan when property adjoining the club’s brand new stadium became available.
The friends bought a fourth floor two-bedroom, two-bathroom flat off-plan built within the grounds of the Cherry Red Records Stadium on Plough Lane – despite the fact neither of them live anywhere near it.
Offshore wind farm site manager David is based in Hull, while IT consultant Liam, who grew up in the area, now works in Adelaide, Australia.
But both men regularly make the trip to south west London to watch the EFL League Two team they have supported for 40 years.
Flats like David and Liam’s now go for a hefty £570,000 – however David, 60, tells The Sun: “For a football fan, homes built into a ground is about as good as it gets.
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“How could I resist having a home next to the ground for match days?”
But living above AFC Wimbledon’s pitch can come with some strange quirks – including one particular rule.
On a residents forum for the flats, tenants claim they’re forbidden from hanging washing out on their balconies.
And when we visit, some tell us their ground rent – a maintenance fee for house buyers – has DOUBLED since they moved in, making their monthly costs now the same as a typical mortgage.
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Some tenants living in the flashy Stadia apartments run by Galliard Homes claim that as well as coughing up £500 a month in fees, they are being asked to pay a whopping £25,000 to use one of the spaces in the underground car park.
Meanwhile people living nearby the new stadium claim their weekends can be fraught with hassle, with regular traffic jams and fans blocking drives and using their front gardens as a toilet.
One young couple said they had paid £750,000 for a three-bedroom flat in the new development, where the shared ownership deals on offer meant some buyers only had to pay a portion of their home’s full value.
The woman, 27, who declined to give her name, said: “Moving here allowed us to buy our first home so we were happy and grateful for that.
“But they doubled the ground rent after we moved in, from £350 to £700, which was not what we were expecting.
“We complained and it has now come down to about £500. But that’s still the same amount that some people will spend on their entire mortgage!”
Like David and Liam’s, the couple’s apartment has a direct view of AFC Wimbledon’s pitch, which means they get a free view of the team’s games when they play – but they “don’t see it as a perk”.
The woman’s partner, also in his 20s, adds: “We can see the pitch from our window but – let’s be honest – they’re not the best football team.
“Another issue is that they’re demanding £25,000 to buy a parking space in the flats, which is completely unaffordable.
“And it seems that no-one here wants to pay that as the car park is always empty. It’s ridiculous.”
Before they were unveiled a few years ago, developers Galliard Homes boasted that around a third of the 604 homes would be available through shared ownership, which would provide “luxury living to all levels of buyers”.
The fact that a number of the apartments overlooked the football ground was also a key selling point – with AFC Wimbledon fans in particular keen to snap up the homes.
Emotional return
The Plough Lane stadium’s completion marked an emotional return for a football club that had been torn away from its natural home since 2002.
That was the year the Football Association agreed the old Wimbledon F.C. could relocate 60 miles north to Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire to prevent it from going bankrupt.
The players were dubbed the ‘crazy gang’ in the 1980s because of their FA Cup winning heroics – upsetting Liverpool in the 1988 final – and the antics of club heroes like midfield hardman Vinnie Jones.
So morphing into a new team called the MK Dons was never going to be accepted by the majority of supporters.
Those that boycotted the move created AFC Wimbledon in its place and a window of opportunity emerged when Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium closed in 2017.
Planning permission was won for a stadium to be built on the 12-acre site just 250 yards from the club’s original ground that closed down 30 years ago.
Galliard Homes agreed to stump up £14million for the new 9,300 capacity ground on the proviso that a number of apartment buildings would be erected alongside it.
The company claimed that with one-bedroom flats on offer from £425,000, it would be affordable for both first time buyers and local parents looking for buy-to-let opportunities.
But the romantic vision of a small club finally finding a home isn’t shared by some who live in the area.
Adam Pfeiffer, 52, lives on a small private road opposite the new ground and reminisces about the peaceful weekends he used to enjoy before the club returned.
Mechanic Adam says: “It’s a nightmare living here now and I don’t even like football.
“The fans take the p***. They park wherever they want and litter all over the street. I regularly spot people using my front garden as a toilet on weekends.”
Kris McKnight runs BB Plumbers close to the stadium. He says: “The dogs stadium was falling to bits so I guess they needed to do something, but it’s a shame that they got rid of it.
“It was the last dog track in England and it was a great night out when you won.”
Business owners are also getting cheesed off with the new stadium because they are now being made to pay £3.20 an hour for parking on match days.
Andrew Yeates – director of the local Balloon and Kite Company – says: “The only real impact is the parking restrictions.
“On ‘event days’ you have to pay and display for one hour and that makes parking more difficult.
“We have to pay for the hour when we are working and then move it around, or we have to park a long way away.
“The biggest complaint I have is that you don’t always know when it’s an event day so you can get caught out. If you don’t know, you get a ticket, it’s that simple.”
‘Traffic is gridlocked’
Roldan Aquino, 50, helps run a food truck opposite the stadium where gourmet burgers cost £9.
He says traffic is frequently gridlocked around the new stadium.
“It can be a nightmare some days,” he says. “When there are temporary traffic lights here for whatever reason, it completely kills the business – people can’t get through and a 10 minute drive takes about three hours.”
But not every business owner is downcast about the new development. Ania Ridley, 40, is landlady at the The Corner Pin pub where a pint of lager costs £5.10.
She says: “I’ve worked here for 21 years and when the stadium was first built, I was worried because we all know what football fans can be like.
“But the ones that come here are really nice and polite – they even apologise if they spill their drinks.
“And the development has brought in new people and younger people into the area, which is great for the pub.
“It used to be mainly old people popping in for a drink but we have a younger crowd now and they are more likely to spend money.
“I think the new flats have given the whole area a boost.”
A spokesperson for Galliard Homes said: “The Wimbledon Grounds development has been a resounding success, offering significant benefits to the local community.
“One of the notable achievements of this project was the successful return of AFC Wimbledon to Plough Lane, made possible through our financial support and the generous gifting of land to the football club.
“The Wimbledon Grounds development was undertaken as a joint venture partnership with The Peabody Trust, previously known as Catalyst Housing Association. Due to this partnership, we were able to achieve a significant increase in the number of affordable housing units, rising from an initial 60 to an impressive 181. These units were subsequently transferred to Catalyst Housing Association, who oversaw the sales and management of them as shared equity properties.
“Parking was offered as an additional cost, due to the limited number of parking spaces available for the private units. Most spaces were held by Catalyst Housing Association for use of the affordable units.
“The ground rents for the properties were determined in the traditional manner, based on the size of each flat. The initial rate was set at 0.1% of the property price, followed by a nominal peppercorn amount in subsequent years.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
