Crystal Palace's Selhurst Park Stadium Gets the Green Light for a Major Makeover

Selhurst Park will soon have a flashy new state-of-the-art Main Stand

Wembley, Tottenham, London Stadium. The capital has loads of world-class sporting arenas, but it could always do with more. So, footy fans will be pleased to hear that Crystal Palace FC’s stadium is finally getting an enormous makeover.

Croydon Council has just given the green light to plans for Crystal Palace to get a state-of-the-art Premier League arena. In the works since 2018, planning permission has finally been granted for the Main Stand at Selhurst Park to be knocked down and entirely rebuilt.

The 100-year-old, 5,200 capacity stand will be replaced with a swanky new 15,300-seat stand. The total capacity of Selhurst Park will rise from 25,486 to more than 34,000. The new stand will have three tiers and will have improved access for supporters with disabilities, a new club shop, museum and café. Now that’s a glow up.

It’s not all been plain sailing though. Residents of Wooderson Close have had to be rehoused by Croydon Council as their homes were demolished to make way for the mammoth new stadium. The football club signed a legal agreement to provide replacement homes, and provisions have been agreed to make sure that the development doesn’t impact the borough’s affordable housing supply.

‘We are delighted that the stadium plans for Croydon’s premier league football club have the go-ahead and this exciting project can move forward,’ said Jason Perry, executive mayor of Croydon.

‘This is the outcome of continued work behind the scenes by the Council and Crystal Palace FC on getting the plans right for the football fans and the area and supporting the residents of Wooderson Close.’

ICYMI: A massive fan-zone beer garden is coming to Wembley.

Plus: Crystal Palace Park is park is getting a £17.5 million revamp.

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Croydon Council has formally approved Crystal Palace’s plans to redevelop their Selhurst Park stadium, six-and-a-half years after planning permission was first granted in principle.

The signing of an agreement under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (S106) — relating to community improvements funded by developers, at a cost of around £1million ($1.3m) — by both parties means Palace are now free to begin significant development of their 100-year-old home ground, once they have satisfied a list of conditions from the council contained within the decision notice.

Palace were granted planning permission, subject to the S106 being signed, in 2018, but chose instead to pursue a £30million redevelopment of their academy, with the final phase of that project now nearing completion. That is significantly cheaper than the stadium project, initially costed at between £75m and £100m but now estimated to be at least £150m. Once completed, capacity will rise to 34,259 from its existing 25,486.

The terms set out in the 2018 planning application did not comply with the London Plan adopted in 2021 — which determines how the UK’s capital city will be developed over the next 20 to 25 years — so an amended application was required, which Palace duly submitted. This was approved by the council’s planning committee, subject to the S106 being signed, in October 2022.

It has now been signed by both parties, alongside various side agreements including the Wooderson Close agreement, which requires the Premier League club to purchase all the social housing in the street of that name which lies within the footprint of the ground’s new Main Stand. There remains one privately-owned home which Palace must purchase. The process of securing a compulsory purchase order (CPO) on that property has begun.

The club and Croydon Council signed a side letter in December, as requested by the Greater London Authority (GLA), which set out matters separate from the existing Section 106 agreement and primarily relate to the sale of the Wooderson Close properties. It requires Palace to pay the council the market value of those homes, plus 2.5 per cent.

A deal with Sainsbury’s to buy a small area of land in the adjacent supermarket’s car park, required for the new Main Stand, has also been agreed.

To meet the conditions of the draft London Plan set by the GLA, there must be “no net loss of affordable housing” and “no net loss of dwellings” in the broader borough. That means Palace must fund the construction of six equivalent four-bedroom houses elsewhere. These must be located as close to the site of the current ones as is reasonably practicable.

Until those houses have received planning permission, work on the stadium cannot be completed, but the relevant legal agreement to commit to replacing the homes has been signed.

Preliminary work on the stadium began this summer, with Palace chairman Steve Parish saying a new Main Stand is essential if they want to remain competitive in the Premier League, which the club have been part of since 2013.

‘Temporary’ buildings between the Holmesdale Road and Main Stands, which have been there for almost 30 years and house the opposition team’s dressing rooms and the club’s offices, are in the process of being removed.

The away dressing rooms will moved to a new location underneath the Holmesdale Road Stand, where £1million is being spent on water-retention tanks to drain its currently flooded basement. Space on another tier below that stand is expected to be used as a car park due to the loss of the club’s current one. This space will also house a new kitchen to facilitate all matchday and non-matchday hospitality requirements — the stadium will be permitted to host up to 12 non-match day events where the number of customers or spectators does not exceed 10,000 and up to four where it does.

“The project is a little behind, but there’s a lot more going on that it seems,” Parish told The Athletic in June.

After Friday’s announcement, he added that it is “yet another positive and exciting milestone in this project”.

“We are making excellent progress on the programme and have committed significant resources to complete the detailed design of the stand and have commenced enabling works this summer,” Parish said.

“We aim to have final plans and costings in the very near future and at the end of that stage, we will appoint a final construction partner. The redevelopment of Selhurst Park will have a transformational impact on the future of our football club, and we are wholeheartedly committed to it.”

Les Parry, a former Wooderson Close resident and vice chair of Croydon’s tenant and leaseholder panel, praised the council and club “not only in keeping residents informed, but also in listening and responding to our needs and requirements”. “They have demonstrated that they were willing to put the people most affected by the stadium’s expansion first,” Parry said.

Jason Perry, executive mayor of Croydon, said: “We are delighted that the stadium plans have the go-ahead and this exciting project can move forward. This is the outcome of continued work behind the scenes by the council and Crystal Palace on getting the plans right for the football fans and the area, and supporting the residents of Wooderson Close.

“The new stand represents a significant investment in Croydon and I look forward to seeing the transformation of the stadium for residents to enjoy.”

Palace have entered into a legal agreement with the council and are evidently eager to transform their stadium into one that will significantly increase their revenues and look aesthetically striking, complete with an eagle’s wing-shaped facade (in keeping with their Eagles nickname) and a glass frontage — a throwback to their original stadium at the Crystal Palace on nearby Sydenham Hill.

While Palace have now been cleared for construction to start, until those replacement homes have planning permission, they can only build up to the first-floor level of the new Main Stand. That is unlikely to delay the project — major work is not expected to commence until next year — but finding the plot of land to build the exact same specification of homes elsewhere in the borough may prove both challenging and relatively expensive.

Yet Friday’s announcement is another step forward in what has been an agonisingly long process to redevelop Selhurst Park and should allay fears that the project will not come to fruition.

GO DEEPER

Palace start work on redeveloping Selhurst Park - what does it mean?

(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

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Matt Woosnam is the Crystal Palace writer for The Athletic UK. Matt previously spent several years covering Palace matches for the South London Press and contributing to other publications as a freelance writer. He was also the online editor of Palace fanzine Five Year Plan and has written columns for local papers in South London. Follow Matt on Twitter @MattWoosie