MILLWALL CEO Steve Kavanagh believes the Lions’ proposed new training ground is “an important step” in helping the club to “continue to grow and develop” after more details about the development were released this week.
Millwall are planning to re-locate their training base to West Kingsdown in Kent. The Lions intend to submit a planning application this month and hope that the state-of-the-art development, which will be on 50 acres, will be completed by autumn 2024.
In a statement on their website on Monday, Millwall said that the objective “has been to develop a contemporary and unique design solution that is rooted in the local area, but that is also fit to meet the aspirations of a forward-looking and dynamic club looking to provide high-quality training facilities for its players and the local community”.
Kavanagh further elaborated on the plans this week when he spoke to NewsAtDen.
“It’s an important step in building the long-term future and sustainability of the club to give it the platform to continue to grow and develop,” Kavanagh said.
“Over the last five years or so the club has moved forward. In the last three years we’ve been on the edges of the play-offs. What we need to do now is to make sure the infrastructure around us allows that development to continue and to keep moving the club forward.
“The two training sites [for the first team and academy] at Calmont Road in Bromley and Blackheath Rugby Club, we don’t own either of those, they’re leased. So we don’t ultimately own and control how we develop those sites. Those sites are at least six miles apart which leads to logistical complexities.
“You’ve then got staff based at The Den, so you’ve got staff on three different sites. Then you’ve got players spread about.
“Because you don’t own those sites, improving them and moving them forward to modern facilities is difficult. You can’t start knocking buildings down and building at Calmont Road because we don’t own it. If you did own it it’s only 15 acres and therefore nowhere near big enough to really warrant the investment you would require to build something.
“And with the expiry of those leases heading at us like a fast-approaching train, we’ve taken the view to try and find some land to develop something that will be ours, that will be an asset of the club. It’s a balance sheet asset but also an asset in terms of the development of players and how we bring players through to that first team.”
Kavanagh said the club will look at other training grounds once the planning application has gone through.
Kavanagh continued: “There’s a well-established set-up of how training grounds are laid out. Our search for a site was over three years. It wasn’t easy, this is the only site we found that we could even consider starting to take forward.
“On that site it’s 50 acres, excluding ancient woodland, so 50 acres that we can put pitches on. There’s another site which we also own there as well on the other side of the M20. We’re not touching that, that’s a farmer’s field and we’ll leave that as a farmer’s field.
“We’re focused on the planning application. Of course what we will do at some point is look at how other training grounds are set up.
“In AFL, which is the architect we selected for [the redevelopment of] The Den, we’ve used them again and they have got vast experience in building training grounds and looking at training ground layouts. At this stage we rely on that but of course at some stage we will get around to some other sites. But we’ve got to get planning first before we get to that phase.”
NewsAtDen asked Kavanagh how much the project would cost.
Kavanagh replied: “At this stage it’s not something I really want to get into because we’ve got to get planning. It’s a complex site. It’s Green Belt. Permitted development on Green Belt is recreational use. However the site doesn’t have any buildings on it, so we need very special circumstances and this is a complex planning application because of that.
“We have to be very sensitive in our work to that, to the local environment, to the fact that it is Green Belt and how we do that. Way over 90 per cent of the site will still be green and recreational use but we have to accept we’ve got to put a building on there and we have to put the indoor dome to ensure our academy status is secure.
“So first and foremost we’ll get the planning application through. We’ve got rough, broad ideas, we’ve got outlines, but that’s not the key component at this stage, that comes next. I can spend a whole lot of time getting engineers in, value engineering, what’s this going to cost, what does that cost – that’s once you’ve got planning. At this point we’ve focussing on what’s needed.
“Clearly, it’s not going to be cheap because building pitches is an expensive hobby. Building indoor pitches is very expensive and building buildings in this day and age isn’t cheap.
“How we fund it and how we build that out, it is an asset that we’re building so we will be and are exploring all different avenues of how we fund that and how we do that.
“At this stage that’s really loose. I’m focussed on planning, getting the planning through and making sure that we can actually go and build this.”
Image: Millwall FC