January 17 2011

Crystal Palace National Sports Centre

Crystal Palace are set to announce plans to relocate the club to The Crystal Palace National Sports Centre.

The Eagles owners will hold a press conference this Thursday at co-chairman Steve Parish's Tag Woldwide offices in London.

The re-development of Selhurst Park or re-location to a new stadium was one of the key objectives when the CPFC2010 consortium took over last summer.

The club was founded on the Crystal Palace site in 1905 and played their matches where the athletics track is today. They were forced out in February 1915, when it was taken over by the Admiralty due to the First World War.

And now Palace could return to their spiritual home which is just 2.5 miles from Selhurst Park.

Parish is keen to increase revenue streams for the club in order to compete at the highest level but Selhurst Park has many restrictions.

He recently told Five Year Plan fanzine: "We are now generating about £300,000 non-matchday income which nets us a decent amount of money.

"The likes of the Hulls and Leeds are getting £2.5m to £4m on non-matchday income. Now we won't get that because we don't have the infrastructure in terms of the space inside the stadium.

"We are desperate to try a find a way forward for Crystal Palace. It may be on an existing site or away. We are working on something that we think is reasonably exciting. Every club gets a spike in support when they get a new stadium. I'd love to do that and create that heritage for the club.

"Arsenal are generating £3m a game more than they were for Highbury. I know we are not in Arsenal's league, that's fantastic. If we could generate £5k more a game in a new stadium - that would be enormous. I genuinely do feel a new stadium in the right place can bring new fans to the football club. A beautiful new stadium is aspirational for kids.

"Selhurst Park is cold because of where it is in that valley and it's an old fashioned stadium with open concourses. Nobody builds stadiums like that anymore as that's not what people want.

"I definitely believe a new stadium will increase support and create a better future for the club and better sustainability and I think we can do that but we have to have better facilities."

Tottenham Hotspur have plans to redevelop the Palace athletics track as part of their bid to move into the Olympic Stadium after the Games in 2012 - and the outcome of this will also be revealed on Thursday.

Listen to the full FYP interview with Steve Parish here: http://soundcloud.com/fypfanzine