Burgess Hill Town look to new stadium

Burgess Hill Town face a crunch final day of the season this weekend as they seek to avoid relegation from the Bostik Premier League, however away from the pitch, they have announced some rather exciting developments today. 
The West Sussex club have revealed plans to move into a £3million purpose built community stadium by the 2021/22 season.
The stadium, which will boast a 3G playing surface, is the result of several months of talks between Burgess Hill Town chairman and director Kevin Newell and local housing developers.
Speaking to West Sussex Today, the Hill Chairman said, “The big benefit is that it provides a facility for the community. There’s a lot of football clubs who don’t have adequate training facilities in the Sussex area, certainly where we are.
“Making that facility available is great for them and it also generates revenue for the football club.
“New facilities obviously do attract players. They like the idea of something new so that will help us with recruitment.
“We want to introduce into that community facility a community cafe and things like that because we’re right on the edge of the Northern Arc development of Mid Sussex council which is going to see another 3,000 houses coming along over the next five years.
“The majority of which are going to bought by young families and the area around the football club is desperately short of proper community facilities.
“We will bring that to the community and generally raise the profile of the football club around there to the benefit of everybody of the town.”
To afford the new development Hill will be selling the Leylands Park site for housing development, with the council applying the proceeds to cover the costs of the new facility.
Newell has been able to obtain figures from specialist contractors who have anticipated that the sale of Leylands Park could fetch between £4million to £5million.
The club would also look to secure grants from the Football Stadium Improvement Fund to help in the building work.
This will be offset by the approximate £3million cost of constructing the new ground as well the cost of a groundshare for the 2020/21 season.