Manchester seeks football museum funds
MANCHESTER City Council is still looking for funding partners that will help share the £8m cost of transforming Urbis into a new home for the National Football Museum.
In November the trustees of the Preston-based museum agreed to move to the location in central Manchester in the hope of attracting more visitors to make the loss-making attraction viable.
The council is looking at external sources to cover some of the £8m bill. It admits that failure to do so could impact on its ability to carry out other future projects.
A likely contributor would be the Northwest Development Agency which gave the museum more than £2m in 2003 following a £240,000 grant the previous year.
But recently published minutes from a meeting of the NWDA board on October 20 show that it wrote to the museum’s trustees stating that they should, “make no presumptions about any future revenue or capital support from NWDA”, if they chose to stay in Preston or move to Manchester. A spokesman for the regional development agency said this was still the case.
A council spokesman told TheBusinessDesk that chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein was still exploring opportunities for a, “significant contribution” to the costs of refurbishing Urbis.
He added: “Officers are confident that these will be finalised within the next few months. The intention is to report on detailed proposals at the executive’s March meeting.”
A report published ahead of a meeting of the council’s executive committee next week states that Urbis will close on February 27 to allow for the refurbishment work and will not re-open until next year.
The closure will put 73 jobs at risk although 45 staff will be retained. The council said it is working to keep redundancies to a minimum.
The National Football Museum’s trustees were forced to look at other options after losing the support of a major funder. The museum needs £1m a year but the Football Stadium Improvement Fund (FSIF) stopped its annual contribution of £308,000 in March to direct its cash into grassroots sport.
The city council provides Urbis with a £2m annual grant which will continue and be used to support the museum. The decision to move has caused anger in Preston where the museum is expected to maintain a presence, but the council has said this satellite location must be funded separately.
