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Leeds United: Arch buy is still on
Leeds United chairman Ken Bates has reiterated the club's intention to buy back their Thorp Arch training ground ahead of the forthcoming deadline.
But United have abandoned plans to launch a scheme which would have allowed their supporters to contribute to the cost of repurchasing the 6m complex.
Leeds have until October to activate a clause in the lease agreement and regain ownership of the property, and completing that deal remains high on the agenda of Bates and United.
Bates said today: "It's an ongoing matter, and we've recently had negotiations about one or two areas of it. That's all I can say at the moment."
The club have rented their training ground since 2004, when the site was sold to Manchester property developer Jacob Adler by the Leeds board fronted by former chairman Gerald Krasner.
A sale and leaseback agreement reached at the time gave United the flexibility to repurchase the training ground up to five years after the original sale.
Leeds are in no danger of being evicted – the club's lease runs for another 20 years – but buying back Thorp Arch would free the club from a rent which drains around 500,000 from their accounts every year.
The last confirmed figure set United's annual payments at close to 486,000, a figure which increases by three per cent every 12 months.
Last year, Bates revealed that the price of buying Thorp Arch stood at 5,828,131, though the addition of stamp duty and relevant legal costs would carry that figure over 6m.
United's chairman told the YEP in October that he was hoping to arrange a scheme which would give supporters the chance to fund the buy-back deal.
The plan would have involved units in Thorp Arch – essentially shares in the property near Wetherby – being sold to fans with the intention of raising the seven-figure sum required by Leeds.
United's aim was that each unit would eventually be refunded with interest, but Bates said today that such a system had not been viable in the timeframe available to him and his fellow directors.
"We looked into that very closely and we wanted to get it off the ground, but there were complications," said Bates. "We're not considering it anymore.
"Schemes like that take a lot of setting up because of all the financial rules and regulations involved and in the end we decided it wasn't the right option."
United's Elland Road stadium was sold around the same time as Thorp Arch but Leeds have a buy-back option on the arena which runs until 2029 and are not under immediate pressure to exercise that clause.
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Wednesday 08 February 2012
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