Belle Vue chiefs David Gordon and Chris Morton have embarked on a series of fact-finding missions as the move towards the new stadium gains impetus.

They have already visited the new main stand at Chesterfield Football Club as well as the Salford Rugby League development just off the M60.

And plans are also in hand to see the magnificent new Torun speedway stadium in Poland and the Vojens circuit in Denmark which, like Manchester, experiences more than its fair share of rain.

Gordon, the Autogate Aces managing director, and operations director Morton are also in discussions about the construction of the stadium.

They have been plunged into new rounds of meetings following Manchester City Council’s recent decision to include the Belle Vue Sports Village project in the Eastlands Community Sports Plan.

Gordon said: “We have looked at various projects undertaken by specialist construction companies. It’s all work in progress but the big word here is progress. Everything is heading towards this project happening.

“Chris and I were hugely inspired by what we saw at the new Chesterfield development. We came away wanting to get the diggers on site and start working.

“It’s a little bit bigger than what we want but it’s a working model of how we see our new stadium.”

Gordon added: “What the visit displayed to us is that while Belle Vue speedway is at the core of all our planning, what we want is bigger than that. It’s about bringing world-class speedway to Manchester but it’s more than that as well.

“The Chesterfield club will use their stadium for 20 or 30 football matches a year but it will be used 365 days a year.

Sports village

“There was an exhibition and a presentation happening when we went and they have something happening there every day, not just when there is a football match.

“That’s how we feel a sports village must be used. It has to be a busy stadium involving all the other things a development like that can deliver in terms of local community projects, corporate hospitality and other events. We were open-mouthed when we walked in at Chesterfield. It was brilliant.

“We also had a meeting with the builders at the Salford Rugby League development. They have just built a stadium at the Fontwell Park racecourse. We were invited to the opening but couldn’t go because we were racing that night.

“We’ve looked at the new main stand there on the website and it’s another example of a very busy place which ours has to be if it is to be successful.”

Gordon continued: “We’ve been invited to Torun by Tony Briggs, a leading air fence builder, and to Vojens by top speedway boss Ole Olsen. Plans to see these tracks are in the pipeline.

“They do have rain issues at Vojens so they have put in an extremely good drainage system which we want to look at. They also have a track cover which we are interested in including in our project so we want to see that as well.

“Finding the time to go is a problem. Chris and I have two, three and four meetings a week about the new stadium.

“A lot of them are about revisiting areas we have been to over the last two or three years. We put things into place then for a later date and now we have reached that point in time when we can put more detail on what has been discussed.

“For example, we have had talks with possible beverage and food vendor partners, but you can only take those kinds of negotiations so far until you get the green light.

“We don’t want to rush into anything without doing the proper planning first and getting the infrastructure right.”

He concluded: “The City of Manchester are used to putting on world events and they want to be proactively involved with us, which is fantastic as far as we are concerned because they have the expertise and logistic set-ups to handle these things in their stride.

“The better the show we put on at the stadium, the better it is for Manchester.”

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