Blues hail community ethos of City Football Academy investment

MANCHESTER City FC shared its “street to stadium” vision of community engagement with an international audience at the Soccerex exhibition as it revealed that it is going to begin a phased move into its new £150m City Football Academy complex within weeks.

Pete Bradshaw,  head of infrastructure development and corporate responsibility at the club, told the audience about how a passion to build for the long term and to have a positive impact on its community had driven its decision to regenerate an 80-acre former industrial site on land next to the Etihad Stadium.

He said: “It would have been easier and cheaper and we would have been in there now if we had chosen a green field site, but we wanted to do it differently.

“It took us 18 months just to clean the soil on what was a horrendously polluted site. All the soil has been washed, washed again and reused. It is now going to be the headquarters of the City Football Group, there are 18 full-size pitches including a 7,000 seat stadium all with under-soil heating. We have our own energy centre, a own reservoir to catch the rain water so it can be re-used, we’ve planted 2,000 mature trees and created a wildlife corridor with 3km of hedgerows.

“We believe we have done the right thing in taking a corner of the city and giving it a life for the future. This is about legacy and hopefully changing people’s lives.”

He said City had sought to use North West suppliers during the the construction process and had taken on 68 apprentices from the local area to work in the academy.

As part of the project 5.5 acres of land was donated to the local community and this is now the home of a sixth form college, which in its first intake is full.

Mr Bradshaw revealed that the move into the new facility had been delayed by bad weather in 2013, and rather than being ready for pre-season, the moved was running three months behind schedule.

The first team will now move into the new complex during the international break which begins on October 5.

He said: “Last year we had one of the worst summers we have had with a lot of rain and that put everything back three months.

“We hoped to catch that up. We haven’t managed to do that, so we will take the international break in October to move the first team, the half-term break to move the academy and the rest of the staff will move a fortnight after that.

“We have worked very closely with the first-team coaches and manager to make sure it is not disruptive.”