Huge response to Everton’s consultation on new facility

Article posted by Coliseum, October 21^st, 2019

Image: Everton FC

Everton Football Club – the English professional football club based in Walton, Liverpool – has received huge response to its proposal for a new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock at Vauxhall in England.

A community-led legacy project will also come up at Goodison Park in Walton, England.

More than 43,000 people responded to second stage public consultation for both the projects. Both stages of public consultation received 63,207 responses in total. The feedback is double that of the first stage public consultation hence making ‘The People’s Project’ the largest commercial public consultation in the city of Liverpool’s history and one of the largest ever held in the UK.

Big names in civic engagement, sports business and marketing fields have termed as “exemplary” the football club’s dedication to engagement and consultation.

The results from the second stage consultation will be made public in November. Based on it, the Stadium Development Team will further fine-tune the club’s plans which will be a part of the planning applications for both Bramley-Moore Dock and Goodison Park projects. The club is on schedule to submit both applications before the end of this year.

The club organized their public consultation in two stages – in November-December 2018 and July-August 2019 under ‘The People’s Project’ brand. The entire exercise generated huge response from fans and residents from across Liverpool City Region and beyond. Everybody gave their valuable advice vis-à-vis the club’s ambitious plans.

The first stage public consultation saw 20,168 people respond, with 94 per cent of people agreeing that Bramley-Moore Dock was an appropriate site for the new stadium and 95 per cent backing Everton’s plans for a community-led legacy at Goodison Park.

In the second stage public consultation held in July and August, 43,039 people participated. The activity included a 19-day roadshow and visiting nine locations across all six Liverpool City Region boroughs. The consultations centered on the designs for a new venue which would accommodate 52,000 spectators and the plans for transport, heritage and the environment as part of the project.

Consultations were also held on design proposals for a legacy project spearheaded by the community on the site of Everton’s current Goodison Park home.

More than 15,000 people graced the roadshow events and users enjoyed popular virtual reality experience giving them a chance to fly over the new stadium and place themselves in the center circle and home stand on match days.

Apart from the events, people also reciprocated through dedicated digital channels in addition to a postal survey carried out among residents living around Bramley-Moore Dock and Goodison Park.

Colin Chong, Everton’s Stadium Development Director, remarked, “The interest and enthusiasm for ‘The People’s Project’ has resulted in an unprecedented response to the consultation. We’re grateful to the thousands of Evertonians, fans of other clubs and people that don’t have an interest in football who took part and shared their views with us.”

“We have been busy working our way through the tens of thousands of comments and ideas and analyzing the results which will inform our proposals as we progress to submitting our planning applications before the end of the year. We’ve been really pleased with the scale of response and how our approach to engagement and public consultation on this project has been recognized as exemplar by industry experts,” Chong further remarked.

Earlier this year, international property consultancy CBRE and socio-economic specialists Real Worth revealed in two independent reports the impact of ‘The People’s Project’ which comprises a new facility at Bramley-Moore Dock and building on and expanding the life-changing and life-saving work of the club’s official charity Everton in the community in the form of a legacy project at Goodison Park.

The reports throw up facts like – ‘The People’s Project’ would deliver a £1billion boost to the city’s economy, it has the potential to generate up to 15,000 jobs with £34 million of income benefiting local families and an additional 1.4 million new visitors would visit the city as tourists yearly.

It is also estimated that the club (including the new stadium and Goodison Legacy Project) would be delivering £793.4 million of societal value between 2024 and 2033, compared to £556 million generated solely through Everton in the community activity.

The individual reports go on to establish that the new venue and the community-led initiative would deliver an additional £237 million of social value to the Liverpool City Region.

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